DES MOINES, Wash. — In March, a school bus driver was seen on camera slapping an autistic child.
Jeanette Burrage, the bus driver who is also a former King County Superior Court judge and Des Moines city council member, faces an assault charge from the incident.
On the day it happened, March 10, the child’s teacher wrote an email to district officials saying the 6-year-old never should have been on the bus leaving from McMicken Heights Elementary.
KIRO 7 obtained the email through a public records request.
The teacher wrote to her superiors saying her special needs students are "packed like sardines" on buses.
"This is unacceptable!" she wrote, calling the bus an "unsafe situation where they are bound to fail."
The problem, she wrote, is that her special needs kids need more room.
"I have asked for this, but more students get added,” she wrote. "My paras and I are SO frustrated!!! PLEASE help!!!"
Those sentiments echo what the boy’s mother told us last month -- that her son never should have been on that bus in the first place.
"I think that he just really wanted to get off the bus,” said Elizabeth Lyshol, the boy’s mother, in April.
He normally rides in a van with two other students.
A Highline Public Schools spokesperson says they were listening to the teacher's concerns -- and normally drove the boy home in a van with just two other students.
But on March 10, they were so short-staffed that the boy was put on the bus with other kids.
"On that particular day, we were extremely short on bus drivers, so much so that the transportation director was actually out driving around -- and we just had to combine some bus routes,” said Catherine Carbone Rogers with Highline Public Schools.
The district says they've added two bus routes, with drivers, to add resources for students.
Burrage has since stepped down from her position on the Des Moines City Council.
The school board is expected to vote on her termination next week.
KIRO
