Bus ban has mum baffled
‘‘I want [the Ministry of Education] to actually give me a reason why they’re saying no, when they haven’t actually given him a chance.’’ Amy Stuart-Forbes, mother
A mother of three says she is being forced to drive 100 kilometres each day to and from her children’s school because her five-year-old son is not allowed on the school bus.
Amy Stuart-Forbes said she had to keep son Jack, who is on the autism spectrum, home from school at least 10 times over the last five weeks, after he was excluded at the end of last year.
Adding to her frustration, she does not know why he has been barred, as the Ministry of Education has not told her directly.
Stuart-Forbes was initially happy to drive Jack about 23km to Murchison Area School from their Owen River home after he turned five last October, so he could ‘‘ease in’’ to school, starting with a couple of hours a day.
But she expected that he would then travel on the school bus with his sisters, aged eight and 14, when she dropped them off at the bus stop a few weeks later.
‘‘He was so excited about going on the bus, and they were like, ‘No, you’re not allowed, you have to hop off’. And that’s the closest he’s ever been to the bus.’’
Daily life had since become hard to manage for the oneincome family, Stuart-Forbes said. While she received a travel allowance from the Ministry of Education, spending two hours on the school run each day meant she couldn’t get a job.
Stuart-Forbes said she couldn’t afford to get the front tyres on her car replaced, so she was using her partner’s car – and driving her partner to and from work at the limeworks in the Buller Gorge, another 15km from their home.
She said Jack had been kept at home when daily life became particularly hard to juggle because of things including sickness.
‘‘I didn’t take him [to school] the other week because I couldn’t afford gas.’’
Stuart-Forbes said she still didn’t know exactly who had decided that Jack couldn’t get on the bus. The school and the bus company, Golden Bay Coachlines, had indicated that it was the ministry’s call.
She said she had been liaising with the school, which had been trying to sort out the matter with the ministry.
But she questioned whether the school thought that Jack still needed a special seat that stopped him getting up – something she maintained he no longer needed.
She was now trying to contact the ministry directly for answers.
‘‘Who’s the one saying no? . I want them to actually give me a reason why they’re saying no, when they haven’t actually given him a chance to see what he’s like on a bus.’’
Murchison Area School principal Andy Ashworth said
the ministry had assessed Jack as being unsafe to travel on the school bus. The school was fighting the decision, and had submitted different proposals about how the ministry ‘‘could make it work’’.
But after going through ‘‘various processes’’, the ministry hadn’t even given a date for when a panel was going to convene to hear the school’s appeal, Ashworth said.
‘‘They are supposed to provide transport for children to get to school regardless of their physical or mental ability.’’
The ministry provided a taxi service for children in other parts of the country, Ashworth said. ‘‘They’ve told us they have a financial cap, and because we are a designated rurally isolated school, they can’t afford to provide this service.’’
The ministry had granted the school just over half a million dollars of property modification to safely educate Jack, he said. ‘‘And yet another arm of the ministry is fighting about $200 a week in transport costs.’’
The ministry didn’t answer The Nelson Mail’s question about who had decided that Jack wasn’t allowed on the bus, citing privacy reasons.
Kim Shannon, head of education infrastructure service, said the ministry could offer assistance to parents whose children faced additional challenges getting to school, like a place on an existing school bus, a door-todoor vehicle service, or an allowance towards travel costs.
She said the safety of all students had to be the ministry’s top priority in deciding an appropriate solution for any individual case.
‘‘In this case, we have been supporting the parents with a conveyance allowance to help cover travel costs, and we have been in discussions with the family and Golden Bay Coachlines to identify a possible solution that would allow their son to access the school bus.’’
Golden Bay Coachlines declined to comment, saying it couldn’t discuss individual students.