Statement to the Board of Trustees

Members of the board:

I’ll start by saying I’m not here to complain about overcrowding. With school funding in Texas, this is a hard problem and drivers and other staff are doing the best they can. I’m here to talk about trust.

On August 18, I learned that my son rode home from school, on the floor, up against the rear emergency door. There were several other children sitting on the floor. We heard from several other parents that corroborated this and our son showed us several videos of his bus ride home.

Our concerns to staff were unanswered and we chose, the next day, to make public a still photo with the children's faces covered. At that time, we were assured by a school board member that the kids were, “...waiting in the comfort of AC in the campus parking lot for the overflow bus to arrive. Our transportation director, Cassandra has confirmed on video. It WAS NOT on the run that way.” This school board member was clearly misled because there was no overflow bus and the bus did go out in that condition.

We responded by releasing a short portion of the video that clearly showed the bus moving. Here’s what Tim Savoy told the press:

“It’s still in the bus loop at the campus,” Savoy said of the video. “The bus pulls up and off to the side to let the other busses pass that bus – while the driver gets up and explains to the kids that they have to be in his seat, that he can’t leave if anyone’s in the middle, and for everyone to get out of the middle.”

Keep in mind he’s not talking about the security video from the bus. He’s talking about the short snippet we decided to share.

In response to this misstatement of what happened that day, we then released a longer video that clearly showed the bus crossing through the intersection of 1626 and 967 on its way east in traffic with the kids still sitting on the floor and my son still sitting against the rear emergency exit.

Tim Savoy then told the press:

“The new video came out yesterday and, clearly, they're back in the aisle somehow or another during the route and so, you know, that's just not acceptable.”

Somehow or another? That’s an interesting way of putting it. Do you notice that the story changes each time we release more information? How is the story going to change when we release the next video, or the next, or the one after that? How about when we share all of the timestamped text exchanges between kids and concerned parents? Why is this happening when they have had the internal security video this whole time?

This is why the underlying issue here is trust and I think there are two things that can help that.

1. First, we should have a full investigation. Not into what happened. We have much more detail into what happened than the district, evidently. I also don’t want to see scapegoating of drivers and other staff. What needs to be investigated is why we were given false and misleading information at every turn. This is far worse than the actual event.
2. Second, we need retractions correcting the false narrative supplied to the press and an official apology to the parents of this district whose trust has been violated. That trust is gained in drops and lost in buckets but it’s the glue that holds any organization together – especially if there is ever a real crisis, not just a simple overcrowding problem.

This is your opportunity to fix a vital communication system that is clearly broken. I pray you take it.

Thank you.