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A Regina father is calling on the city’s public school board to review its busing procedures after his six-year-old daughter missed her bus and walked home alone this week.
As soon as Blayne Wood’s daughter looked around to see an empty Plainsview School playground after class on Wednesday, he said she decided to begin the trek home to Skyview herself. She used the nearby crosswalk to get across Courtney Street before making her way northbound on a gravel road, which is where her mother found her roughly 40 minutes later.
“Her mom stopped the car and got out, and (the girl) immediately started to cry because she was scared,” Wood said Thursday. “She said she wanted to be brave and she didn’t know what to do.”
When he contacted the school to ask for an explanation on what had happened, Wood said the principal suggested his daughter should have told a teacher that she had missed her bus.
“(The principal) is absolutely right — (the girl) should have let somebody know,” Wood admitted. “But there needs to be a safety net in place for when stuff like this happens.”
According to Regina Public Schools spokesperson Terry Lazarou, the girl wandered over to the Catholic side of the joint-use school at the time, which is why none of the four supervisors noticed she had missed the bus.
“This isn’t supposed to happen, it very seldom happens, but it does occasionally happen,” Lazarou said. “The supervisor didn’t notice that the student left the playground; it has nothing to do with the bus driver.”
In response to the incident, Lazarou said staff at the school spoke with students the next morning about the importance of staying on their own playground and near a teacher.
“While we’re quite sorry that this happened, it’s a good way for us to reinforce the fact that (students) need to be a little more attentive and not wander off,” he said.
However, Wood is looking for more tangible change.
“I hope that the school board looks at this as a whole to find something procedurally; maybe the bus driver does need to do a checklist — something,” he recommended. “There needs to be responsibility somewhere because I don’t feel safe with my daughter at school now, and that’s not right.”
Lazarou noted many bus drivers avoid roll calls because they do double runs. Issues also tend to arise, he added, when a kid gets permission to walk home or has a doctor’s appointment, for example. However, he mentioned it has been discussed at the school.
“We’ll see what happens there, in terms of keeping better track,” Lazarou said.
Meanwhile, Wood hopes action is taken so this type of situation doesn’t happen to any other families.
“It was a case of, ‘Holy crap, what do we do?’ I felt hopeless as a parent,” he said, noting a possible abduction and Amber Alert went through his mind. “Do we have to wait for something bad to happen before procedures will change?”
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a corrected version of the story, accurately reflecting the area in which the girl lives.
