School bus driver let 4-year-old Pickering boy off at wrong place, mom says

The mother of a four-year-old Pickering boy is furious after a school bus driver let her son off at the wrong destination after his first day of senior kindergarten to wander around his neighbourhood alone.
    
Carla Whittingham says staff at Gandatsetiagon Public School sent her son, Jeremiah Herbert, home on the wrong bus and that the driver should have never let the boy off without an adult there to meet him.

"The bus company told me it was the driver's first day and he would be disciplined, but he would not be fired ... for leaving my four-year-old on the street all by himself," Whittingham told CBC News. 

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Whittingham says Jeremiah recognized his street — Sunbird Trail, just off Whites Road north of Finch — and walked to his front door, which was locked because she was at work.

A passerby saw the boy as he was about to cross the street and called police.

"A civilian in my neighbourhood stopped him and asked him where he was going," said Whittingham. "And my son responded and said that he's walking to daycare.

Worried staff at First Steps Childcare Services also contacted police, and a supervisor went to pick up the boy.

The daycare is located more than one kilometre away from the family home.

Whittingham says her son is brave, but she is now worried Jeremiah will have to think about the experience every time the bell rings to end the school day.

"He didn't cry at all," said Whittingham. "That's the little boy he is. I cried. I was worried. He didn't see the severity and he just thought he could walk to daycare, because it's where he was supposed to be."

The superintendent of the Durham Regional School Board, Anne Marie Laginski, says Jeremiah's mother had called the school's office on the first day to change his bus drop-off location to the daycare.

'We own this'

But because of poor communication, Jeremiah was sent on the bus he was originally assigned, instead of the bus headed to the daycare.

"We own this," said Anne Marie Laginski, "because once a parent calls in, we have to ensure that the message gets to either the child's teacher, or to the bus driver. So that's our fault."

Laginski says the school board is now working with the bus operator, Stock Transportation, to ensure better communication and to ensure rules about leaving junior and senior kindergarten children with an adult are followed.

"On their end, they do have to recognize that letting a four-year-old out [of a bus] without someone there to pick the child up is not a safe situation."

In a statement sent by email to CBC News, Stock Transportation said: "Our policy is for[junior and senior kindergarten]students to be met by an adult and in this circumstance it did not occur. We are taking this matter very seriously and have taken corrective action with our driver. We are happy that the child was brought to his daycare safely and unharmed."

Laginski says the vice principal at Gandatsetiagon Public School will be there each day to make sure kindergarten students are sent home on the correct buses.

Jeremiah's mother says there has been no mishaps since the first day of school, but that she wants her community to know what her son experienced.

"It's very hard. I sit at work every day wondering if he is okay, and making sure he does get on that bus."