“I was terrified”: Special needs student at Connally ISD left on school bus for 7 hours

WACO, Texas (KWTX) — Connally ISD is now conducting an investigation, after a special needs student was left on a school bus for seven hours Monday.

The student’s mother tells KWTX she was never alerted he was absent. The district shared Tuesday that attendance was not tracked as usual because the regular teacher was absent.

Shannon Jennings Hernandez says her 11-year-old son Isaak has severe autism and never misses a day of school because he loves having perfect attendance.

“Last school year he had a perfect attendance and this school year it’s the same goal for this guy, so he is usually ready to rip out of the door when he realizes it’s the next morning,” Hernandez said.

Student picked up at 7:09 a.m., left on bus until afternoon

On Monday morning Hernandez walked her son to his bus stop, the bus picking him up for school just after 7 a.m. like it does every day.

“He leaves this house about 7:09. He takes a special education bus, you know one of those smaller buses,” she explained.

At around 3:40 p.m. that afternoon Hernandez says she got a call from the district’s director of transportation telling her that Isaak had accidentally been left on the bus that morning and hadn’t been in class all day.

“He let me know that he was okay and that he was hungry,” she shared. “They made sure to give him something to eat and then they let the nurse come and make sure he was medically okay.”

Mother says she never received absence notification

According to the district’s website, attendance is taken every day at 10 a.m. Hernandez says normally the school will let parents know if their child is absent.

“At 10:30 I would get a phone call or a text message and sometimes I’d get an email that says your child was marked absent today,” she said.

However, she never got that notification. She adds that thankfully Isaak is okay physically, but the outcome could have been much worse.

“The weather could have been Texas usual weather,” Hernandez said. “He could have got off the bus and wandered.”

Which is why she says there needs to be more communication between the schools and parents, especially those with special needs kids.

“I was terrified because… at some point I know there was a way to alert them sooner. There has to be something better if that’s where we’re sending our kids,” Hernandez shared.

Student returned to school Tuesday, still nervous about incident

Isaak did go back to school Tuesday, Hernandez explaining that he still doesn’t understand why this happened.

“This morning he was questioning… you know a lot of questions on the bus,” she said. “He was nervous about being left again, he’s like I don’t ever want to be left on the bus again mom.”

In a statement Monday, the district said it is working closely with Texas Rural Student Transportation, the company that handles the school’s transportation needs, to determine what failures led to this incident.

The district said it is committed to putting additional checks and fail-safes into place to prevent something like this from ever happening again.

The driver and the bus aide have been placed on administrative leave until further notice.

On Tuesday the district shared with KWTX that their communication platform sends an automated message to parents after the student is marked absent. That day the teacher was absent and attendance was taken on paper, meaning that it did not sync to the alert system until it was manually inputted later in the day.

Full Connally ISD Statement:

“This afternoon, a driver found a student unattended on a bus. It was determined that the student had been left behind after the morning route and had remained on the bus for the duration of the school day.

The district is working closely with Texas Rural Student Transportation, the company that handles our transportation needs, to conduct a thorough investigation to determine what failures led to this incident. Regardless of the cause, we acknowledge the significance of this event and commit to putting additional checks and fail-safes into place to prevent something like this from ever happening again.

Additionally, the district has taken steps to self-report the incident to appropriate oversight agencies so that any additional investigations and/or audits of our practices can be conducted. The driver and the bus aide have been placed on administrative leave until further notice.”