Fair warning - what was the child's testimony in court? Oh, couldn't speak. Child was dead.
Who speaks for the children?
Disabling the alarm was a bad idea? How about ILLEGAL? The alarm was there for a very specific purpose: To protect the children!
These are public school buses where parents entrust their children to a bureaucracy. The bureaucracy has put safeguards in place to prevent this very thing from happening. To "disable the alarm" is to tempt fate and put children at risk. The very act of disabling the alarm was an act of child abuse.
Disabling the alarm system was a bad idea, but there's a lot of tut-tutting about inattention to the welfare of the child.
ReplyDeleteFor those inclined to judge the bus driver harshly, read Gene Weingarten's "Fatal Distraction":
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/27/AR2009022701549.html
Fair warning: this is a very emotionally powerful article about this very phenomenon. Disturbing imagery included.
Fair warning - what was the child's testimony in court? Oh, couldn't speak. Child was dead.
DeleteWho speaks for the children?
Disabling the alarm was a bad idea? How about ILLEGAL? The alarm was there for a very specific purpose: To protect the children!
These are public school buses where parents entrust their children to a bureaucracy. The bureaucracy has put safeguards in place to prevent this very thing from happening. To "disable the alarm" is to tempt fate and put children at risk. The very act of disabling the alarm was an act of child abuse.
There has been at least one incident in MCPS within recent memory where a child has been left on an MCPS school bus and found at a later time.
ReplyDelete