NEWTON COUNTY, Ga. — A mother is demanding answers after her 6-year-old daughter was placed on the wrong school bus.
The incident happened at West Newton Elementary School in Newton County on Monday. Channel 2′s Larry Spruill was in Newton County, where he talked exclusively to the child’s mother, Amber Harris, for Channel 2 Action News at 5 and 6 p.m.
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Harris said the school put her daughter, Zarielle Hannah on the wrong bus Monday afternoon. When a panicked Harris went to the school to find Zarielle, no one seemed to know where she was.
Harris said she found out about the incident not from school administrators, but from her son’s pre-K teacher after he was removed from the same bus.
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“She let me know that someone brought him back to her, because the bus that he originally gets on, he was not supposed to be on there,” Harris said. “What if my baby would have gotten off on the wrong bus stop? She’s only 6 years old.”
Harris said that to make matters worse, school officials didn’t seem to spring into action quickly enough.
“When I went to the school, to let them know my daughter was possibly on the wrong bus, they didn’t have any sense of urgency to try and find her to see, if she was on the wrong bus and if she was, where was the bus? I had to go find my daughter,” Harris said. “A lot of things, went through my head about what could have happen, and that’s why I was so upset and angry.”
Harris called the bus transportation company and the bus driver brought Zarielle back to the school.
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Spruill reached out to the Newton County School System and got the following statement from the district:
“The incident occurred due to a school system miscommunication that led to the child getting on her regular bus route, rather than the newly assigned route. We are grateful that the parent made us aware of this situation, and that the child was always in the presence of school system staff. As we have an ongoing commitment to improving our processes, district personnel are conducting a review of our protocols to identify the gap in communication to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.”
Harris said she’s now considering pulling her children out of the school.
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