Schools

Superintendent: School Responded Immediately to Complaints About Bus Driver

The father of one of the students on the Waukee bus route said driver's behavior went from "suspicious and not cool to being scary."

A school bus driver who reportedly gave his phone number to two elementary school students Thursday, Sept. 19, was pulled from his route after the parents of one of the students voiced concern with school officials, Waukee Community Schools Superintendent David Wilkerson said.

The driver had been brought in temporarily from out-of-state by Durham School Bus service, which contracts with Waukee for student transportation, because of school board shortages. He was removed from the route “that very day,” Wilkerson said.

On Wednesday,  WHO-TV Channel 13 aired a report in which the father of one of the girls said the driver took pictures of his daughter, 8, and another student; asked them to highlight their names on his route sheet; and gave them his phone number.

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“Well, it went immediately from just being kind of suspicious and not cool to being scary,” the dad, who was not identified, said in the Channel 13 interview. “He had the two that he gave the notes to also highlight their names on his roster which he didn’t do with any other kids. So he knows where they live, he knows their names. He now has their picture.  It is concerning.”

Wilkerson said the email to Patch that the district not only removed the individual the day the incident occurred, but also immediately reviewed video and audio from cameras on board the buses.

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“We have two sets of video cameras on all our buses that video and audio recorded all activity in the bus from the time the bus leaves the lot until it returns,” he wrote.”We know exactly what occurred that day, and have the audio of the comments the driver made.”

In an interview with the Des Moines Register, Wilkerson said the driver took a group photo of all of the students on the bus holding up their index fingers to indicate they were “No. 1,” then wrote down his phone number and email address and asked two of the students  to pass the information along to their teachers. Wilkerson said the driver’s behavior was inappropriate, according to the Register story.

The video has been turned over to the Dallas County Attorney’s Office.

Wilkerson told Patch a district employee who told the television station that the district hadn’t had a chance to review the driver’s background check was in error. In an email to Patch, Wilkerson wrote:

“All drivers undergo a background check and pass that check prior to driving a route. Durham uses a federal criminal background check system that includes all 50 states as well as U.S. territories.

“All employees in the Waukee school district must pass a multi-layered background check before they begin work here. We are extremely strict about that, there are no exceptions made.  

“In fact, our background checks are more rigorous and in-depth than what the state requires and they were in place long before the state mandated the checks.”

Wilkerson said Durham also puts drivers through a stringent background check prior to hiring them. “We don’t typically review all of the bus driver checks, but rather audit them,” he said in the emil. “We have now requested copies of all the background checks for all the drivers, and will have them on file in our office as well.”

He said the district knew that Durham was temporarily using out-of-state drivers and has “not tried to hide that fact,” but the district employee interviewed by the television station was not aware of that.

Wilkerson said it’s a common practice for school transportation contractors to bring in drivers from other areas when driver positions can’t be filled locally.

“This is not unique to Durham, as we had the same issue the past few years with our previous provider, First Student,” he said in the email. “They were also forced to bring in drivers from other areas on a part time basis to meet needs as they are unable to find drivers for all their routes.”



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