As a kid, it wasn’t always obvious how big a difference an attentive bus driver can make. There’s a wide gap between a reasonably fine drive to a place most of us didn’t want to go and a chaotic ride that made boring classes seem like a blessing by comparison.
For many of my school days, my bus driver was a man I could describe as “tough, but fair.” He had a sense of humor and didn’t mind a little chit-chat, but he also made it clear that if kids acted up enough, he would drive us back to school and make us wait like we had detention.
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But as miserable as it was when his replacement did nothing about a group of girls loudly singing the same three songs every morning, one unfortunate story from Wisconsin makes it clear how dangerous that unresponsiveness can be.
In Green Bay, Wisconsin on Monday, Lynn Waldron-Moehle was waiting at the bus stop for her daughter, Lily.
Lily was travelling home from Langlade Elementary School on an all-special needs bus. But when she arrived, she was clearly in distress.
As Lily stepped off the bus, she was crying and holding her arm.
Lily wasn’t able to communicate what had happened to her, but the experience had clearly left her inconsolable.
And so, Waldron-Moehle decided to draw a bath for her daughter.
As she told WKRN, “She loves baths and that’s soothing to her. So I brought her home and I was getting her ready for the bath.”
However, when she took off Lily’s sweatshirt, she saw some intense bruising on her upper arm.
What they would later learn after the school’s principal reviewed the bus’ security recordings was that another girl next to Lily had bitten her for an extended period of time.
Waldron-Moehle said the principal told her, “it was gruesome and horrifying to look at. That the girl was brutally biting my daughter’s arm.”
This compelled Lily’s parents to wonder why the bus driver hadn’t intervened while this was going on.
As her father, Chad Waldron, told WKRN , “The seat was right behind the bus driver and he couldn’t hear anything going on or see anything? Come on.”
Indeed, there was nothing in the guidelines set out for the driver that stated he had to sit idly by while Lily was attacked.
A representative from Lamers Bus Lines said that all Green Bay school buses have video recording and their drivers are allowed to act if an altercation arises between students.
For her part, there wasn’t much Lily could’ve done about the attack.
As Waldron-Moehle said, “She can’t tell them to stop. She couldn’t get away. She’s in a five-point harness car seat. She just had to sit there and take it. And the bus driver wasn’t stopping.”
The child who bit Lily no longer goes to her school, but she will nonetheless be riding in a van with two adults present from here on out.
Waldron said, “If you can’t keep an eye on these kids and they are special needs, then you need to bring somebody in you know to be watching if the bus driver can’t do it.”
h/t: WKRN
