The parents of a 5-year-old boy from Wahoo say their son won’t be riding the school bus for a while after he was dropped off unattended behind his after-school program facility Thursday afternoon.
On Kyler Delozer’s second day of kindergarten at Wahoo Elementary School and first day riding the school bus, there was a mix-up about whether Kyler was going to be picked up by his parents after school or ride the bus. By the time the school realized he needed to ride the bus, his bus had left. School staff then put him on the next bus, which was full of middle schoolers with a bus driver on a different route.
Kyler was scheduled to be dropped off outside the Wahoo Civic Center for an after-school program but when the bus driver dropped him off, Kyler’s parents say the bus driver dropped him off behind the building.
“He [bus driver] didn’t wait for anybody to come out and get him. He just sent him out on his way and didn’t wait for him to go inside and just left. It’s scary. I wouldn’t want this to happen to anybody else’s kid,” said Christine Syverson, Kyler’s mom.
“Picture your kid out back of a strange building he’s never been to, crying for his parents – that’s enough to aggravate any sane parent,” says Nick Delozer.
Some time later, someone found Kyler crying behind the building and took him inside the center.
“I just couldn’t believe I wasn’t notified. Like if we were notified at the beginning we could’ve avoided everything,” says Syverson. “There was just a lot of miscommunication.”
On Friday, Syverson went to the school to speak to officials and was told it’s not protocol for students older than Pre-K to have to be dropped off to an adult.
“They’re so little. He’s only five years old. I wouldn’t be able to leave him alone and go up the street and that be okay so I don’t think they should be off the bus without someone there like a guardian,” says Syverson.
“He shouldn’t have been dropped off alone. Any adult with any common sense should be able to realize, okay, this is a crying 5-year-old, he’s a younger child, he’s upset, we shouldn’t leave him here without an adult,” says Delozer.
The parents say they like the school, but want this incident to shed light to a miscommunication issue and hope this doesn’t happen to another child.
KMTV spoke to Wahoo Public Schools superintendent Brandon Lavaley, who says the incident all came down to poor communication and bad circumstances. He says they’re sorry for what happened and are already working to ensure this doesn’t happen again. He added all bus drivers will now be required to drop off all students on the front side of Civic Center.
Lavaley said he couldn’t disclose whether the bus driver would be reprimanded as that is confidential personnel information.
