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SALT LAKE CITY — An 8-year-old boy with autism was left on a school bus Monday for most of the school day.
Now administrators at the child's school are apologizing and tightening procedures.
"It's never happened here before. We don't ever want it to happen again," said Julia Hood, director of the Carmen B. Pingree Autism Center of Learning in Salt Lake City.
Hood said the bus driver was fired and administrators also made sure the boy, who is nonverbal, and his Spanish-speaking parents were given whatever kind of care that they needed and deserved.
Following the incident, the school immediately started communicating with the parents through a client advocate, Hood said.
"He's been here and doing great, and participating in treatment since then," she said.
The boy was on one of three buses the school runs when it pulled into the lot at about 8 a.m. Monday.
"He was not taken off the bus when it arrived at school," Hood said, "so he was left on the bus for a period of time."
Most of the school day was over before the staff realized the boy was not in school and someone went out to the bus to find him.
School aids help children get off the bus, but Hood said it's ultimately the bus driver's responsibility to check the bus.
"We did end up terminating the bus driver for not following the policy, because of the danger it put the child in," she said.
The entire staff at the Pingree Autism Center also met Tuesday to talk about what went wrong. According to Hood they discussed questions like, "How do we make sure that this never happens again? Where did we miss a step? How did this get overlooked?"
"We've since revamped our procedures," the director said.
As part of the school's new procedure the bus driver is required to check every row — which was protocol before Monday's incident — and then sign off in the office after he's left the bus. The office manager will then go out and do a walk-through and also sign off that the bus is empty.
"So that we have at least two people checking the buses every day, morning and afternoon when they come back," Hood said.
The Pingree Autism Center staff will also tighten up tracking procedures for attendance and contact parents immediately when a child is not at school.
"We take it very seriously, and we want to make sure that not only this family, but all of our families know that our intent and our goal is always safety and appropriate treatment for their children," Hood said.
Monday night, the boy's mother informed the school that he was doing well and did not have any kind of health problems.
The boy has been a student at the school since he was in preschool, so he and his parents know the school well. Hood said the boy was back in school each of the last three days and is doing fine.
