Evans: So Anna, tell me about how this story came to be. Where did it all begin?
Spidel: Earlier this year, we got a tip from an anonymous source in the Woodward School community that a bus driver had hit a parked car outside of the school. That was in February. So, we decided to put in a Freedom of Information Act Request for the police reports to see if there are any records of the crash.
Evans: And what did you find?
Spidel: We did get some records back. They showed that in February, a KPS bus driver had hit a parked car outside the school. Woodward School is in a residential neighborhood and doesn’t have a classic bus loop or pickup area.
Buses pull up to the sidewalk in front of the school, and parents also park their cars in a nearby zone further back on the street for school pickup. There’s a designated zone for school buses to pull in. The incident report said the bus had been approaching the bus loading area when it struck a car that was parked in the parent pickup area. There weren’t any kids on the bus.
The report said that the bus driver was at fault, but it also said the road was icy and created conditions where it was hard to miss the car. The owner of the parked car, Cherrie Scruggs — she has a daughter that attends Woodward and said she was talking to a teacher at the time and didn’t see the incident.
“I heard a crash, kind of like a crash noise behind me, but I hadn't really thought anything of it. And then I heard one of the teachers say that, 'oh no, that, I think that bus just hit that car',” Scruggs said.
Evans: What did Cherrie have to say about the crash?
Spidel: Well, she was upset. There was significant damage to the side of her car, and she had to pay out of pocket for repairs, which left her without a vehicle while the car was in the shop. She said that was tough to navigate with a young kid, and she didn’t necessarily agree with the determination that icy roads caused the crash.
"There's probably a good 10 to 20 buses that funneled through that exact place, and none of them throughout this entire winter have had any problems not hitting any of the cars," Scruggs said.
Evans: So, had this driver been involved in any other incidents?
Spidel: We decided to look into that. We put in another FOIA request to the school for any other complaints or disciplinary reports that had been filed against this driver in the past two years, and we got back five files.
One parent complaint has to do with a child that wasn’t properly buckled in on this driver’s bus that later claimed to have hit their head as a result of not being buckled. That parent later filed another complaint that appears to claim the driver retaliated against their child's sibling for telling their parent about the buckling incident and the sibling was now scared to ride the bus.
There were also official school communications about disciplinary actions against the driver, like in one instance where the driver was over 30 minutes late to a special assignment, and in-bus tracking systems showed the driver’s location in a Hobby Lobby parking lot.
All of those incidents happened before the driver hit Cherrie Scruggs' car.
“This is showing a pattern of lack of care from this driver. And I may just be one person, but I'm one of many, and it's showing that this bus driver is continually not showing a level of care that would be appropriate for someone to feel safe giving your child over to them," Scruggs said.
Evans: It sounds like a lot of this story is based on public records.
Spidel: Well, it’s based on the ones we could get our hands on. We originally asked KPS for copies of all complaints filed against all KPS bus drivers in the past two years — and they said that would cost over $1800. That’s out of our budget here, so we only got the records pertaining to this bus driver.
Evans: What has the district said about how they’ve handled the situation, or more broadly, what their policy is for cases with multiple incidents?
Spidel: We heard about this story pretty soon after the crash happened and thought we might be publishing a story fairly quick, so I went to the KPS offices in hopes of finding a spokesperson to talk to. Instead I ended up talking to Superintendent Darrin Slade. I wasn’t able to record the conversation, but what he said was pretty well summed up in an email he sent me after our talk:
Since then, we haven’t heard much from KPS about this. So far, they have declined to comment specifically on this incident or any specifics about how they’ve handled actions against this driver. Their spokesperson Susan Coney says they can’t comment on personnel matters. We also asked them what their policy is for handling multiple complaints against bus drivers and incidents involving bus drivers. They didn’t get back to us with a response by our deadline.
Evans: We haven’t heard the driver’s name in this story — why is that?
Spidel: Well, we tried to get in contact with the driver for this story but we ultimately couldn’t. They didn’t have a publicly-listed phone number or much of a social media presence. We tried sending a certified letter to an address we had found for them, but it turns out that address was out of date and our letter was forwarded. However, it didn't appear to make it to its new destination — USPS listed the letter as having been forwarded on April 20, but the trail stopped there. Because we couldn’t reach them to get their side of the story, we decided not to include their name. And we didn’t want to come to their place of work while kids were there.
