Terrified parents in a quiet Connecticut suburb are reportedly taking matters into their own hands after school bus drivers nearly left students stranded in obscure parts of the county — including a youngster with autism who was taken 40 miles from home.
Parents of Consolidated School District of New Britain students have found themselves stuck in a nightmare loop — watching their children over their iPhone tracker or Apple AirTags — to ensure that they’re not whisked away to a neighboring county by First Student bus company, according to NBC Connecticut.
The company took over CSDNB’s specialized transportation services in June.
Somers McCray, a New Britain parent, had to track down her autistic son after he was accidentally driven to a neighboring county, spelling disaster for the fretful parent and her neurodivergent son, who relies on a stable routine, NBC Connecticut reported.
McCray’s son was let out of school at 3:30 p.m. last Friday, but still wasn’t home hours after dismissal.
When she called the First Student dispatch, they told her that the GPS tracking for her son’s bus had been lost.
She quickly pivoted to check the boy’s iPhone location, which pinged in Danbury — a staggering 40 miles away.
“I tell the dispatcher, he said, ‘No, he’s not,’ I said, ‘Yes, he is. I’m like, ‘Oh my God. What is this woman doing with my baby?’ Like, I don’t know what’s going on,” McCray recounted to NBC Connecticut.
McCray coordinated with local police, First Student and the school district and arranged a pick-up at a 7-Eleven gas station in Southington, roughly 10 miles outside of New Britain.
By then, her exhausted son was wracked with fear and battling a headache “just from the travel,” she told the outlet.
Lilly Reyes, another New Britain parent whose special needs son is nonverbal and requires a wheelchair, dealt with the same problem when her child was taken to the wrong school one morning.
“Dispatch did not give him paperwork to where my son was going, so he Googled a school, put it in his GPS, and went to that school in Plainville, not knowing that that is not the correct school. The school in Plainville then called the correct school, and told them, ‘Hey, we have two of your students here, what do we do?’ Then they told the bus driver the correct address, and my son got to school at 10:45 in the morning,” Reyes explained to the outlet.
The toll of the ordeal caused her son to spiral. Reyes said that since then, he’s become so “dysregulated” that he started to hit himself and lash out against his peers and family.
Dr. Tony Gasper, CSDNB’s superintendent, said that it’s become apparent that the drivers and bus company “just were not ready for the start of the school year.”
First Student assured that it is taking proactive steps to remedy its service and hiring additional out-of-state drivers to fill the gaps.
The school district, though, is considering lobbing financial penalties against the company for its apparent failures.
First Student and the school district did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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