In the Worst of Times…
When districts are faced with the death of a student, they must provide comfort and support to everyone affected
By Stephane Babcock T Tere are moments that change lives, moments that are
both irreversible and tragic. Last year, more than a dozen school districts faced similar times when students were struck and killed while either approaching or stepping off a school bus. Te families and friends of these children face unfathomable grief. For others connected to these children in less direct ways, their deaths leave an impression that is never forgotten. Before Jeff Cassell became president of School Bus Safety
Company, he was the vice president of corporate risk man- agement for Laidlaw. In his more than two decades with the school bus contractor, he witnessed 31 child fatalities, and he said he still remembers every death and the pain that he saw in the faces of the families. In that time he also wit- nessed how these catastrophic events affected the districts and its personnel. “People often forget that there’s not just one victim
when a child dies,” said Cassell. “I believe there are still three school bus drivers that are under permanent psychiatric care because of when they got out of the vehicle and saw that child. Tey saw something that no one should ever see. Tey never got over it.” Cassell went on to relate how then-Laidlaw President
John Grainger broke down in tears in front of him when learning of the death of a child during one Christmas holiday season, another moment that has etched a per- manent place in Cassell’s memory. In these situations, it is impossible to bring solace to the
affected families, something that Cassell also struggled with in his position. Whether it was one day, one week or one month after the accident, there were negative conno-
40 School Transportation News Magazine May 2011
tations tied to any communication between the company and the family of the child. No matter the length of time, any apology was most often viewed as the contractor at- tempting to reduce its liability. As anyone can imagine, the parents are angry, frustrated
and paralyzed at times by their grief, and there is no ap- propriate period of time to wait to give an apology. Many times these apologies are relayed when the two parties meet in mediation, and sometimes an apology is all the parents were looking for. “I had one woman say, ‘Tat’s all I wanted’ after we apolo-
gized, and she walked out. She didn’t want money, she just wanted to know someone cared,” remembered Cassell. But the company, like school districts themselves, had
others to worry about, as well. In the days following these events, Cassell would send a counselor to meet with the driver involved in the incident and all the other employees at the specific location. Te pain experienced by all those involved often trickled down to touch the other drivers and the management, at times resulting in managers leav- ing their positions. Sometimes it is the drivers themselves who give solace,
coming to the aid of one of their team members. In the years following the Vietnam War, a Minneapolis junior high school student died when he was decapitated on the bus by an outgrown tree trunk. One of the district drivers, a Vietnam veteran, was the first on the scene of the accident. “[A driver] had seen a lot of death in the battlefields of
Vietnam, but he was overwhelmed by what he saw that afternoon,” said Ray Kroll, an NAPT past-president and current coordinator of train-the-trainer seminars for the
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