A Baltimore school bus driver might have violated policy after failing to stop when a 6-year-old special-needs student tried to exit through the front door — and ultimately fell to his death from the back of the still-moving bus.
Drivers are trained to stop a bus whenever a student is disruptive or not seated, said Keith Scroggins, chief operating officer for city schools. That policy isn't written in the school system's transportation manual, but it will be added in January, he said.
The student, Jeremy Jennings Jr., displayed behavior that would warrant the school bus to pull over, according to police reports of the Dec. 8 accident. Jeremy got out of his seat and began an altercation with another child, according to Lt. Rob McCullough, spokesman for Baltimore County police.
One of the two adult aides on the bus broke up the altercation, and Jeremy tried unsuccessfully to leave from the front door. He then ran to the back of the bus, opened the rear door and fell onto the road, McCullough said.
Scroggins and school officials declined to comment specifically on the accident because it is still under investigation by police. But Scroggins said that school bus drivers, including those who work for contractors, are trained to stop a bus any time a student is out of his or her seat, engaged in an altercation or causing a disruption.
After stopping the vehicle amid a disturbance, school bus personnel are also instructed to contact police and their dispatcher whenever activity would interfere with or prevent the safe operation of the bus, school officials said.
City school officials say they will review protocols for transporting special-education students.
Jeremy was being taken to his West Baltimore home from the Villa Maria at St. Vincent's, a Catholic special-education school in Timonium. The bus was traveling at Pot Spring and Girdwood roads when the accident occurred. Baltimore County paramedics responded and found the injured boy, who died two days later.
The boy's mother, Lisa Avery, says she plans to file a lawsuit. "I still need answers," Avery said. "I still only have bits and pieces."
The bus driver, who worked for a contractor, M R Hopkins Transportation Inc., had his license disqualified, school officials said. The two adult aides who were on the bus and also worked for M R Hopkins have had their certifications suspended pending the outcome of the investigation. Their names have not been released.
M R Hopkins has been contracting with the city for more than a decade, and school officials said the company also trained bus personnel in the school system's policies and procedures.
Repeated calls to M R Hopkins since the accident have not been returned. The company is still providing transportation for city students.
Jeremy's death has spurred questions from special-education experts and parents of city students about school system transportation training and policies, and whether they need to be altered to better accommodate students whose disruptive behavior can result in emergencies or tragedies.
"This is not something that should be taken lightly, but it's something to think about from the perspective of, the bus is usually an unstructured time for kids, a place for emotion to flare," said Ellen A. Callegary, founding partner of the Baltimore law firm of Callegary & Steedman P.A., which focuses on special education, disability and family law issues.
"Children with complex disabilities can sometimes do things you're surprised about," Callegary said. "One of the things you have to always be thinking about is safety."
While police are still investigating the details leading up to the accident, Jeremy's family is awaiting a videotape from the bus that may answer questions about whether other protocols were violated. Police are treating the videotape as evidence, so it has not been released.
"That will tell me everything," Avery said.
The videotape may show where the two bus aides were sitting as Jeremy ran up the aisle. One of the aides was assigned to one student, and another was responsible for Jeremy and three other students.
"That one aide has enormous responsibilities," Callegary said. "But you would think the aide would know how to deal with the kids."
According to the contract between city schools and M R Hopkins, bus aides are to sit in a seat that "offers the best view of all student passengers, a position that is ordinarily in the back of the bus. However, some school system policies also say that the best vantage points for bus aides to intervene in disruptive behavior is being seated midway down the bus."
Callegary pointed out, however, the complexities of caring for special-needs students, saying their strength and speed can be erratic and unmanageable.
"It is not surprising to me when incidents occur on the bus, because even with multiple aides, kids just do stuff," she said. "If both of them were behind him, he could zip quickly."
Another issue that has arisen is whether the boy was in a harness, which his special-education plan called for, according to Jeremy's family.
School officials said that they would also be reviewing policies that address transporting students whose individualized education plans require that they be secured by child safety restraint equipment.
Experts urged school officials to also examine whether bus transportation is best for emotionally disturbed and hyperactive children like Jeremy, who was often sent home on doses of Adderall, a drug for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and whose mother had to be in constant contact with Villa Maria administrators.
"It's really important to look at individualized needs of the child when making the determination about transportation," said Leslie Margolis, managing attorney of the Maryland Disability Law Center. "I think it's very difficult for school systems to do that because it's so expensive and so complex."
Still, ensuring that the best transportation policies are in place for special-needs students is especially important for school systems like Baltimore that send students out of the district to receive service they cannot provide, Margolis said.
"If you're choosing to have someone take on your responsibility because you can't yourself, you're still responsible," she said. "If [the policies and trainings] are not adequate, you pay the ultimate price."
Jeremy's death is not the first time that the school system has had to review and reinforce policies involving the transportation of special-education students.
In September 2001, a city school bus driver and an aide were fired after a student was reported missing from school and later found asleep on the seat of a bus.
In September 2000, a city school bus driver and aide were fired after a 6-year-old blind girl spent several hours locked inside a bus that was circled by snarling attack dogs on a deserted lot. The girl was found at 10:30 p.m., with bruises she suffered while stumbling around the empty bus.
The city schools' transportation manual was revised to include a paragraph, highlighted in bold letters and accented with exclamation points, stating that the bus driver and attendant are responsible for checking for sleeping children.
Parents of special-education children hope that Jeremy's death will lead to similar changes.
Bonnie Blades, the parent of a special-education student who is also taken by a contractor's bus to Villa Maria, said that Jeremy's accident brought to light the safety issue she and other parents have been complaining about for years. She said she can hear the activity on her daughter's bus before it pulls up to her home and often fears for her daughter's safety.
"When I first heard about it, I was very angry but not surprised," Blades said. "I do feel bad for the bus aides and the bus drivers, because they're not prepared to deal with these emotional disabilities. These kids aren't in Baltimore City because their schools are not prepared to deal with them."
Blades said she hopes that Jeremy's death will help save the lives of other students.
"You put the child on the bus in the morning, expecting them to be safe, and it's just really sad," she said. "But it needed to be brought to light, and they need to do something about it."