Fort Worth ISD calls the incident an isolated case after investigating parents’ complaints.
FORT WORTH, Texas — Isabel Arreola is a concerned parent who wants to know how Fort Worth ISD is going to make sure her 9-year-old daughter arrives at the right bus stop.
Arreola’s concerns come after a school bus driver dropped them off blocks away from their assigned bus stop.
One of the students on the bus shared cell phone video with Arreola showing the chaos on the bus.
“You hear these kids just screaming at you. It’s total chaos on this bus,” said Arreola.
Because you can hear the children yelling and crying about being forced to exit the school bus, Arreola gets emotional just watching the video.
The concerned mother wants school leaders in the district to see the video.
“If it doesn’t touch them to hear these kids crying because just to watch it was hard,” Arreola said.
It’s hard to watch because her 9-year-old daughter is on the bus.
The Fort Worth mother says for the third time this month the school bus driver made a scary mistake. She shared her worst nightmare about her daughter being dropped off at an intersection away from home on a strange street in an unknown neighborhood.
Arreola said, “Them getting picked up, kidnapped, you never know, or them getting hit out there.”
Arreola showed WFAA a map on her cell phone which shows her daughter’s bus stop on Lipscomb Street near their home.
She not only highlighted the correct bus stop in yellow, but she also highlighted two other locations blocks away where she says the same driver dropped off her daughter since Sept. 1.
Arreola warned it’s not just her daughters and fellow riders who have been at risk, but others as well. She learned from other parents that their children had been dropped off blocks away, and in one case, across busy Hemphill Street in Fort Worth, despite screams from a parent.
“A parent was screaming at the bus driver telling him these kids don’t belong in this neighborhood. They don’t belong here,” said Arreola.
Fort Worth ISD’s communications department sent a statement to WFAA that read, “We have spoken with students’ parents. The District conducted an investigation, and we believe this is an isolated incident: the driver was a substitute and is no longer driving the route.”
Arreola said, “To me, this should not be driving at all.”
But just like many school districts across Texas, FWISD is short on bus drivers. In some cases, school bus routes have had to be combined, according to Arreola.
The district advertises on the side of its school buses that it’s hiring drivers.