FIRST ON 3: Driver, monitor suspended after student left on school bus

BRUNSWICK COUNTY, NC (WWAY) — A Brunswick County school bus driver and a bus monitor are on paid administrative leave as the school district investigates how an elementary school student was left on a bus Wednesday morning.

Bus driver Evelyn Miller, 44, and monitor Roswitha Delts, 55, both started working for the district in the fall of 2012.

According to district spokeswoman Jessica Swencki, Miller’s daily route includes an early run for Cedar Grove Middle School and then a second run for Virginia Williamson Elementary School. After dropping students at Virginia Williamson Elementary the bus returns to Cedar Grove Middle School.

Swencki says Virginia Williamson Principal Shirley Williamson got a call from Miller at about 10:40 a.m. Wednesday explaining that when Miller returned to her bus at Cedar Grove about at about 10:30 a.m. to prepare for a mid-day run, she discovered a first grade female student from her elementary route sleeping on the bus.  The student was immediately transported to Virginia Williamson, where the school nurse checked her out. School administrators contacted the child’s parent and transportation officials arrived at the school to begin an investigation.

“She said, ‘Mama, I was scared and I was hot. I was hot,'” the child’s grandmother Debra Johnson said.

That is how Johnson’s 7-year-old granddaughter described being left on that school bus.

“There is no excuse for an incident of this nature to occur,” Swencki said. “All bus drivers and safety monitors are specifically trained to walk through the entire bus after completing their assigned routes. This unfortunate incident was completely avoidable and was clearly a violation of the standard protocol expected of all bus drivers and monitors in Brunswick County Schools.

That training is critical to Johnson, because she says her granddaughter has epilepsy and a brain tumor.

“She runs she plays she does what everybody else does, but you have to watch her because you never know when it’s going to turn to something else as far as running away from you,” Johnson said.

A fearful scenario Johnson said could have happened while no one was watching that bus.

“What would have been the phone call if they would have had to call us and tell us that she was gone? You know?” Johnson said.

While she says she’s thankful those were not the phone calls she got, she says she shouldn’t have gotten a phone call at all.

“Things like this happen,” Johnson said. “Yes, it was a mistake, but was it a mistake that could have been prevented? Yes it could have been for a 2 second walk through a bus.”

A mistake Johnson hopes never happens again because she asks all bus drivers to take their job and Brunswick County’s children more seriously.

“We put our children in your hands,” Johnson said. “Take care of them.”

“We are so thankful the child is safe and will use this example as a repeated reminder to all drivers and monitors to follow standard procedures.  There is simply no room for error,” Swencki said.

Pending the outcome of the investigation appropriate personnel action will be taken, Swencki said.