For more than four hours, six nonverbal students with special needs were unaccounted for after their school bus traveled to incorrect locations around Brooklyn last year, prompting school officials to contact police, according to a watchdog investigation released Friday.
The students, ages 6 to 8, were supposed to arrive at school around 9 a.m. but did not get there until about 1:25 p.m., according to the report from the city’s Special Commissioner of Investigation for the city’s public schools.
“They should have arrived to school by roughly 9 o’clock, and they didn’t arrive until almost 1:30 in the afternoon,” Special Commissioner Anastasia Coleman said.
The bus’s location was tracked by a parent who had placed AirTags in the backpacks of her two children aboard the bus. Coleman said the parent watched as the bus traveled to incorrect locations and repeatedly called for information.
“She was looking and watching and pretty frantic about it and calling, rightfully so,” Coleman said.
The bus was driven by Eric Chery, a fill-in driver with less than three weeks on the job, and had a matron, Germina Thomas, who had worked in the role for nearly 20 years. Both worked for Consolidated Bus Transit, one of more than 50 companies contracted to transport students in the city’s public school system.
School officials contacted the bus company at 10 a.m. and reported the situation to the city’s Office of Pupil Transportation.
At 11:45 a.m., the company told the school the driver was lost but expected to arrive within 15 minutes. The bus did not arrive for another hour and 40 minutes. By then, police had been contacted.
According to the report, when the bus finally arrived, a person who spoke with investigators “boarded the bus and observed that Student A had urinated on herself and removed her diaper and leggings, with her dress still on.”
“It was pretty hard. If you think about any child and then throw in that they’re special ed in diapers, being on a bus that long is a pretty terrible situation to be in,” Coleman said.
Chery told investigators he had driven to two incorrect schools before receiving the correct address at 10:40 a.m.
He said he did not arrive sooner because he had to stop to take phone calls from the bus company and parents. He also told investigators he was not fluent in English.
Thomas told investigators she did not speak to the driver during the incident or attempt to contact the school, bus depot or anyone else.
Coleman said the incident was serious enough to warrant a formal investigation.
“It rose to a certain level of egregiousness where we said we needed to investigate this one,” she said.
The investigation recommended that Chery and Thomas no longer work with students from the city’s Department of Education.
“We made the recommendation that they do not work with DOE students,” Coleman said.
A spokeswoman for Consolidated Bus Transit did not respond to a request for comment.
The company told the Daily News that both employees had been placed on administrative leave since the incident and were not permitted to use the company’s buses or interact with students.
The report comes amid increased scrutiny of the city’s yellow bus system, which serves about 150,000 children, nearly 70,000 of whom have disabilities. Parents and advocates have raised concerns about long rides and late arrivals to and from school.