School bus driver refused to drop my daughter home

[Theherringbones]

My year 9 daughter gets the school bus service home from school everyday. Its a private service for her school only and It’s about a 50 minute journey.

Tonight there is an unusual amount of traffic on the roads. The driver refused to drop my daughter at her (home) stop as it would take him too long to get there. He said he would drop her somewhere 15 minutes away and she would have to have someone pick her up. She was in tears in the phone to me. The usual 50 minute trip took him about 80 minutes.

The bus stop she was dropped at is a clear run to our home as it’s the back roads and there was no traffic on them. I know that it would have taken him an extra 15 minutes to drop her home, but it is his job!

I was stuck in the middle of the traffic in the opposite direction, trying to collect my other child and had to make all sorts of crazy arrangements with friends to get to her. Luckily I made it just in time.

I had words with him and he was completely rude, ignorant, aggressive and arrogant about it. He refused to give me his name and said it would have take him too long to take her home (it would have been an extra time for him) and there wasn’t another option.

How can a private bus service that is the only reason she can attend this school, refuse to drop her home? Am I being unreasonable or should he have dropped her home, no matter what?!

This absolutely needs to be raised with the school. This is a massive breach of safeguarding protocols for any school.

You are absolutely right to be fuming.

To those talking drivers hours, no company leased out to schools will cut their drivers hours that close.

You are absolutely not being unreasonable, this is not ok.

If he was that close to his hours limit, the company should have sent another driver.

And if she was abducted during the time she was alone that would be okay would it?

It can't be a diversion, though, can it? It must be his normal route.

I am not sure how any of those points are relevant?
The child was on a school bus and was dropped off, without prior arrangement, a significant distance from home in the dark without a concrete plan on how she would reach home.

Everyone here would be up in arms if it happened to their kid. They’d be up in arms if their own bus took a detour then refused to take them where they were supposed to end up. It’s the MN way to try twist things so the Op is at fault and it’s fucking strange.

If it was a 15 min walk I'd say that was fair enough, but a 15 minute drive can be quite a distance walking wise, when you think how far you can drive in 15 mins. I do sometimes think people who drive everywhere can forget that. I think a grown adult would be quite miffed about it never mind a 13 yr old! It definitely deserves to be looked into.

Yes, on routes that they know.

I don’t think she has been vague.

Op has said she pays for this service. It’s irrelevant why she can’t pick up and drop off her child as people are often in that situation. She mentions other children in a post.

Also why does a diagnosis matter? Any child could feel uncomfortable about this situation. A child with suspected SEN may find it more disturbing.

She wasn't alone at any point

She isn't 9.

I’ll answer a few more questions:

I just checked and the walk from where he dropped her off to home is 2 hours and 12 minutes. There are no pavements and it’s through a wooded area with roads that have a 60 mph speed limit. So there is no way she could be expected to walk home.

Its an independent school

I pay for the bus service. Her stop is specified.

She is under care of the SEN Dept at school but undiagnosed as of yet.

I told my daughter on the phone that I most likely couldn’t be where he was dropping her off in time as I was in standstill traffic and had been for hours already and at the time had no idea when I would make it back and he needed to take her home.

The driver wouldn't speak to me on the phone.

I asked her to wait with friends for me if I didn’t make it in time.

The school phone lines were closed.

If they are so close to the limit on their hours for the last run of the day that an extra 15 minutes will take them over, then they shouldn't be doing the run.

As I said before, you will likely find the school bus has a specified route which does not actually include where the driver was picking up and dropping off from.

A now deceased friend ran a company running school buses to the outlying rural villages. By rights the children were expected to get to eg the local village as it was within reasonable walking distance. As an obligement he would run them to their homes. This is what it sounds more like here.

What may happen if the OP starts making too much noise, is that all the local kids will be expected to get lifted and dropped at one location. These are not actual taxies.

He didn't know there was necessarily going to be someone available to pick her up. OP says she made it just in time - does that mean he was about to disappear?

It sounds similar to a school in our area. There is only 1 mixed sex Catholic school and it's in a town outside the city, so the Catholic feeder primary's in the city have a choice on the single sex Catholic schools or this one mixed sex. For that reason there's a bus service for that school that picks up and drops off from all over the city. It's difficult to get to otherwise.

Some people have these things called jobs they need to be at, and other responsibilities at that time.

Her stop is on a route and a standard stop for other children if they want too. It’s just what I call her ‘home’ stop. We are a few minutes walk away from it. So it was a stop he was supposed to make on his route.

He simply chose to take an alternative route and exclude that stop due to not wanting to sit on traffic.

Interestingly the earlier bus arrived only minutes before the late bus as the driver did take his usual route and stop at every stop.

I really don't understand why people think this hours issue is a complete excuse. This company contracted to do the journey. It knows about its drivers' hours, indeed so do the drivers themselves. There is no excuse for this happening.

Quite.

School buses usually do have a specified route with specified stops and they have contracts with the schools and parents.

Yes it would be roughly 3 hours of driving a day just for the school run for her. Then somehow I’d need to get my other kid into school in the opposite direction and get to work… not possible I’m afraid.