GOODRICH – “I’m fed up,” said Van Richards.
A Thursday, Feb. 6 incident in which his six-year-old son suffered a gash to the head has Richards livid – not necessarily because it happened, but because of how it was handled.
“They’re trying to shove this thing under the rug,” he said. “That driver didn’t do her job.”
“It was an unfortunate accident,” said Dr. Jerry Lawrason, director of transportation for the district, but, “I couldn’t find any wrongdoing on the part of the driver.”
According to the bus driver’s incident report, Richards’ son slipped off his seat while the homebound bus was turning from eastbound Perry Road to northbound Vassar Road. The boy suffered a “gash” on the right side of the back of his head.
The bus driver radioed Reid Elementary School and offered to reroute to take the child home immediately, but reportedly no one was home at the time. The driver continued on the regular route, and the school subsequently reached Richards, who said the message was that “he slipped and fell.”
Richards said there was no communication about the child’s wound, and when he met the bus to pick up his son, he said the driver was applying pressure to his son’s wound “with a dirty paper towel.”
“The buses have first aid kits,” he said. “Why wasn’t it used?”
The child eventually received two staples on a wound Richards said measured about two-and-a-half inches.
“It was bad,” he said. “It was split wide open.”
Further, he has not been satisfied with the response, or lack thereof, from administrators since the incident. Although he said Reid principal Paul Minns “has been decent,” he hasn’t heard back from other district administrators.
“They haven’t apologized to me,” he said.
Richards admits that his son may not have been properly seated, and the driver’s report said students had been warned to stay seated on the bus. There have been numerous problems with misbehavior and fighting on the afternoon bus, he said, although his child’s morning bus ride does not have the same problems.
Lawrason admitted that the driver probably should have used gauze from the first aid kit, but otherwise defended the decision to take the student home rather than notify emergency medical services.
Drivers have procedures to follow, have received first aid training and recently received education on blood-borne pathogens. In the judgment of the driver, Lawrason said, the wound did not constitute a “severe injury” that would warrant an ambulance.
“There was not a tremendous amount of blood spilled,” he said.
This school year has seen multiple complaints from parents about bus issues, including alleged overcrowding of buses at the beginning of the school year. Lawrason said the controversy is overstated, however.
“In terms of the number of kids we transport every day, we don’t get than many complaints. The last thing we want to have happen is an injury on the bus.”
Richards said bus-related problems date back to his years as a Goodrich student, and believes the administration needs to take the complaints seriously.
“These issues were issues when I was in school,” said the 1992 Goodrich graduate. “I was a band student who had to stand in the middle of the bus. [Administrators] forget that students they taught could become residents of this community.”