Child safe with family after getting off at wrong bus stop

YOUNGSTOWN

A first-grade Summit Academy student is back safe with her family tonight after she got off at the wrong bus stop.

It was the first time the girl had ridden the bus and the driver had no information about her or where she lives. The driver did not see her get on the school bus when he picked up students after school to take them home. The girl got off the bus with a group of children and walked with them down the street, a city school district spokeswoman said.

The bus left as the driver didn’t know there was a problem. The little girl began crying and a man picked her up and transported her to Taft Elementary School where he dropped her off.

When Colleen Murphy-Penk, Youngstown City School District’s director of transportation, was alerted to the problem she sent a bus to Taft to pick the child up and take her home. But the girl’s grandmother picked up the child at Taft and took her home. The ordeal lasted less than half an hour.

The district’s transportation department is instituting changes to try to minimize more issues.

Consistent changes, such as altering a child's stop for each afternoon, must be made at least three days in advance. The district can no longer accept emergency change requests such as a parent calling the same day to ask that a child be dropped off at a location other than his or her designated bus stop. Parents will need to make other arrangements.