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Bus driver fired after kindergarten student left alone at wrong stop

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A five-year-old kindergarten student was left to wander alone for half an hour at a mobile home park after his bus driver dropped him off at the wrong stop, with no supervision.

And while the driver has since been fired, the boy’s mother is still mistrustful of the bus system and says her son is too traumatized to even go back to school, let alone ride the bus.

“It’s horrifying, really, what happened,” said Fan Zhang, who works outside of the home and employs a caregiver for her son.

“And now he’s too afraid to go to school, he says to me, ‘Mommy, I don’t want to go to school, I’m scared I will get lost.’ ”

The boy attends kindergarten at Our Lady of the Assumption School in Bowness. After school on Wednesday, the bus driver dropped him off at the Greenwood Village trailer park several kilometres from his home in Valley Ridge.

“He was lost and wandering around for half an hour,” said Zhang.

“Somebody noticed him walking around and called the police. I was very upset when I got that phone call, my heart was racing.”

Bill Young, president of Wilco Transportation, which provides bus service for the Calgary Catholic School District, said the bus driver was immediately fired because she went against a company policy that states that kindergarten or Grade 1 students cannot be dropped off without a responsible adult there to meet them.

“We haven’t been able to determine yet why this driver would do that, it went totally against our policy,” said Young.

“Her answer was that it looked like the boy knew where he was going . . . we don’t feel that’s a satisfactory answer.”

Young added that all Wilco bus drivers were sent a strict reminder Thursday about the incident and the company’s policy of never dropping off young students alone.

Karen Ryhorchuk, a spokeswoman for Calgary Catholic School District, says they, too, are “very concerned” about the incident and will be meeting with all the parties involved later this week.

“We want to make sure we do everything we can to ensure the boy feels safe and comfortable and not fearful of getting lost again.”

Ryhorchuk added that the board does offer practice rides for kindergarten students in May, and that maps are handed out for students with large circles around their stops.

“But we are still looking at whether there is anything more we can do to improve communication between the school, the bus provider and the family.”

eferguson@calgaryherald.com


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