Panther Valley bus stop mix-up leaves girl unattended

A Panther Valley Elementary School parent is concerned after her 7-year-old daughter was left alone in Lansford borough for nearly an hour as a result of a bus stop mix-up.

Brandy Phy said her daughter was left at her bus stop Wednesday afternoon despite the fact that she was not there to pick her up.

“We don’t want any other parents going through this. It was horrifying not knowing where she was,” she said.

The girl is in transitional kindergarten, and rides the bus with her two siblings.

Wednesday was unique because she was supposed to be riding a different bus with her two siblings to stay at their grandmother’s house after an early dismissal for parent-teacher conferences.

Phy was at the school for conferences when the principal came in to tell her that only two of her children made it to their bus stop.

Phy said she and the principal, Robert Palazzo, jumped in their own vehicles and rushed to her home in Lansford, where they found the girl near her home, distraught and with scrapes on her hands.

Phy said she blames the bus monitor, who should have not allowed the girl off the bus if there was no parent there.

“When we signed them up for school, we were told they would not be let off the bus without a parent,” she said.

She said the incident has been traumatizing for her daughter, who loves school and was recently recognized as part of her school’s program to reward positive behavior.

“There was a big event (Wednesday night) that she was looking forward to all week, but then this happened and all she wanted to do was lay on the couch,” Phy said.

Superintendent Dennis Kergick said it was a serious concern, but also an isolated incident. He said the district has a policy of not letting kindergarten-aged children off the bus without a parent.

“We have protocols and things in place that help to alleviate that, because God knows you never want to drop off a young child in that situation,” he said.

The bus monitor is not a district employee. She works for Kistler Transportation, which has been contracted to provide buses to Panther Valley for more than a decade.

Charlene Bailey, a supervisor for Kistler, said she reviewed video and audio of the incident and determined that the bus monitor made a mistake.

“(The girl) ran to the sidewalk, the driver and monitor saw her run to an adult, and they thought it was the parent. They thought she was fine,” Bailey said.

Bailey said she would not have fired the monitor, and said she has a good record in two years of work, but she resigned on her own from her job following the incident.

Bailey said that some fault for the incident has to lay with the school, which did not question when the girl boarded a different bus from her two siblings. She said it’s unfair to place all the blame on the aide.

“The woman feels horrible. She has kids, too,” she said.

Kergick said that the incident doesn’t change the district’s relationship with Kistler because they have been a good partner in providing bus service.

“I’m very pleased with the service we’ve received from Kistler Transportation. I firmly believe this was an isolated incident. If it’s not I’d like to know, because a child’s well-being is more important than anything else,” he said.