One Child Left Behind

The Paul Truesdell Podcast

It was supposed to be a simple end to a school day: Justice Johnson, a Boston first-grader, would ride the bus home like every other excited kid. But what began as a rite of passage turned into a nightmare that dragged on for hours, leaving Justice stranded on a bus and his mother, Ronda Johnson, in a state of panic.

Justice was set to arrive home at 3:30 p.m. for his very first solo bus ride. As the minutes ticked by, Ronda waited. And waited. The new app meant to track bus locations was about as useful as a flip phone in a dead zone. By 4:00 p.m., Ronda's concern shifted from mild worry to full-blown panic. Her calls to the school and bus dispatch went from polite inquiries to desperate pleas.

Hours later, her son was finally found—passed out on a bus seat at the bus yard, surrounded by his own drool. A joyride to oblivion with no return ticket, courtesy of someone’s failure to do the one basic task everyone assumes: check the bus. “My baby was on that bus for like four hours,” Ronda told CBS News Boston, adding that the bus driver apologized but couldn’t quite explain how he managed to lose a whole child for an entire afternoon. The answer, as evasive as a politician’s promise.

Boston Public Schools issued a statement that’s as comforting as a lukewarm cup of coffee: “The safety of our students on yellow school buses is our top priority,” they said, pledging to work with their contractor to get to the bottom of the incident. Meanwhile, Justice is now too anxious to ride the bus, as if anyone could blame him.

Sure, we get it—bus drivers have busy routes. But it seems like "don't leave a kid behind" would be step one of the job description. Makes you wonder what the protocol will be when states like Florida roll out recreational marijuana, and we start considering bus drivers texting while driving as the least of our problems. As we keep adding new distractions to the mix, maybe checking a bus at the end of the day is just another task that’ll fall into the void of “should’ve done that.” But hey, safety first… right?