Children stranded by school bus sparks debate over parental responsibility
PARENTS of children left stranded when the school bus is a no show say the company should take more responsibility but the bus operator says parents should stop leaving young children unattended. Who’s right?
Central Coast
Don't miss out on the headlines from Central Coast. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- Old church recalls lost days of shipbuilders
- Fit dad dies during ocean swim
- Milk answer to feral milk problem
- Census data reveals who’s doing the chores
A TENSE debate has erupted over school bus travel after young children were allegedly left stranded when the school bus didn’t arrive.
On one side of the row is a Bataeu Bay mum who says bus companies should take more responsibility, and on the other is Red Bus company which says it’s ultimately up to the parents.
According to mother of two Krysta Starkey, her son Kayden, 8, has been stranded by the school bus twice in six months.
The first time she says the bus drove straight past without stopping at the school bus stop in Dunning Avenue and the second time was on Friday when children were left standing in the pouring rain when the bus didn’t arrive.
On each of these occasions, Ms Starkey said by good luck she was either at home or driving back past and was able to deal with the situation. However, usually she would be on her way to work. She said often another local parent would wait with the children but this was not always possible.
“Kayden was a bit upset because he was only seven — he was scared because he didn’t know if I was going to be home or not — a bit shocked and confused,” she said.
Ms Starkey rang the bus company on both occasions and insists a Red Bus employee had been “rude and arrogant”.
“There was no apology or concern — nothing,” Ms Starkey said.
“He wanted to blame the kids not standing out the front, he wanted to blame the bushes on someone’s property for obscuring the driver’s view.
“You cant blame those things — they have a duty of care and they drove straight passed and left them standing there.
“Parents need to be aware that they can’t rely on the service — they have to have some kind of back up plan,” she said.
“Their response times to send another bus if the first one breaks down are not good enough either — imagine if a young child tried to walk to Bateau Bay Public School and was hit by a car trying to cross Central Coast Highway.”
BUS COMPANY SAYS IT’S UP THE PARENTS
Red Bus planning and development manager David Bain said Friday’s incident was due to a bus break down and procedures were in place to deal with this.
“Our procedure is that as soon as a driver calls it in another bus is dispatched immediately to go and replace it. The driver of the broken down bus would keep the students on the bus until the other bus got there and then they would transfer the kids over and continue on,” he said.
He said if this meant children would arrive after school classes started, the school would be informed.
“We don’t have names and addresses of parents and it would be an impossible task anyway.
“From what I can understand on Friday the replacement bus was only 11 minutes late.”
“The responsibility for safety of the children at the bus stop rests on the parents — they should be there with the child,” Mr Bain said.
“I have seven children and 16 grandchildren and I wouldn’t like to see any of them left standing at a bus stop by themselves until they got to high school at least,” he said.
“Any child under 12 should have parental supervision at a bus stop.”
Mr Bain said the bus company frequently saw “unsafe behaviour” by parents — including calling their young children across the road.
“Parental supervision overcomes many of the hazards children can face — its not just walking to and from the bus stop its waiting at the bus stop.
“Things can happen in five minutes — and we are aware of that and that’s why we get a bus out there as fast as we possibly can.
“Any vehicle can break down at any time — it’s not a common occurrence — but when you have 100 vehicles on the road every day — something is going to go wrong at some stage.”
IN OTHER CENTRAL COAST NEWS
