Trenton ends relationship with bus company
TRENTON >> The capital city school district found its scapegoat.
Following the sexual assault of a 5-year-old special needs student on a bus at the end of March, the Trenton school board decided Monday night to cut ties with Delaware Valley Bus Line, the company that was responsible for transporting the children.
The decision, which will take effect on Friday, came after school board officials met with a representative of the Hamilton-based company behind closed doors at Monday’s meeting.
“We have decided because of their lack of performance, we are terminating the agreement with them,” school board President Gene Bouie said Tuesday in a phone interview, noting the company was given the opportunity to state its case why the district should continue contracting bus services with Delaware Valley. “I think that the transportation department actually had all the necessary evidence to prove that they were in breach of contract.”
A fifth-grade boy with special needs reportedly sexually assaulted the girl by exposing himself and pushing her head into his groin during the March 28 incident as students were being transported home from P.J. HIll on a 52-passenger bus. The victim’s mom said neither an aide on the contracted bus nor the bus driver reported the incident to the district.
The incident was one of five assaults to occur on district buses since July, when another Trenton special needs student, 8, was sexually assaulted in a similar manner as the recent attack.
Protesters gathered at Monday’s meeting to demand that the district take action to protect the children.
Nelson Ribon, the district’s acting superintendent, apologized to the upset parents and community members who attended and spoke at the meeting.
“I am upset,” Ribon acknowledged. “It bothers me. We are working on it. It does not mean the work is done. I agree with all of you. We need to do better.”
In a prepared statement, Ribon said the district is in the process of reviewing its transportation practices and conducting an audit to determine if any additional safety measures are need to protect the students from harm.
“The Trenton schools will ultimately deliver transportation services in a blended fashion with the use of transportation vendors, supplemented by its own fleet of state-of-the-art buses that will include cameras, even though the law doesn’t currently require that,” the superintendent said. “We believe this will create a safer transportation environment for our students.”
When Ribon told the audience that the camera plan would start in September, community members erupted and stormed out of the meeting.
“We’ve got kids being sexually assaulted and you’re talking about September,” shouted Nicole Whitfield, executive director of Special Parent Advocacy Group, whose agency publicized the recent assault. “The next time you see us, it’ll be in court. Y’all waiting on somebody to get killed. That’s what you’re waiting on.”
Earlier in the meeting, Whitfield blamed the school board for not taking action sooner and requested the district place more supervision on the buses.
“Everybody that was sitting on this board when the first child was sexually assaulted should be ashamed,” Whitfield said, noting district officials are “sitting on their hands” until another tragedy happens. “Because you didn’t question it, you didn’t make sure that it didn’t happen again and you didn’t stand up for our kids. If it was your child, you would be ready to blow this place up.”
Providing some additional information on the recent assault, Nibon said there were only nine students and an aide on the bus. The superintendent also disclosed an aide from the summer 2016 incident in no longer assigned to district buses and another aide has been pulled from a district bus this year.
“The district spends approximately $9 million on transportation in the last school and only receives 29 percent of that amount in reimbursement from the state and federal government,” Ribon said. “In that regard, the district expenditures and its transportation decisions are made to ensure the students are safely transported.”
The Trenton teachers union president said the district should employ smaller buses to transport children with special needs. The girl victim from the recent assault had in her Individualized Education Program (IEP), a legal plan schools must abide by to meet the need sofa special education student, that she was to be transported in a special needs van, which obviously did not occur.
“We have to stop this,” Trenton Education Association (TEA) President Naomi Johnson-Lafleur said at the meeting. “We cannot simply say we care about our children. We need to show that we care about these children.”
Janice Williams, TEA’s grievance chair, alleged “institutional racism” has been occurring since September at the district with the school board acting as the perpetrators. She also called out the state Department of Education monitor for Trenton, Les Richens, whom she referred to as“white privilege” and the “$100,000 man” due to his salary to oversee the district.
“White privilege over here doesn’t care about these brown and black children because the first time a child got assaulted on that bus, he would have went to the commissioner and said ... ‘We need something to be done to ensure the safety of these children,’” Williams said. “That did not happen. As far as I’m concerned, Les Richens, you should have been doing something for the past damn three years you’ve been here.”
The district will have two other vendors take over Delaware Valley’s bus routes.
Delaware Valley is the same company responsible for leavinga4-year-oldTrentonchild stranded on a bus the whole school day in April 2015 and was also the bus provider during the sexual assault last summer.
A Delaware Valley Bus representative declined comment on the district’s decision to end its contract.
“Everybody needs to held accountable for the level of the services they provide these children,” Bouie said. “We need to start fixing things and hopefully this sends a message that people have to provide a high level of service. You can’t just take the district’s money and not do what you say you’re going to do.”