Autistic students have died, been assaulted in bus incidents across SE Michigan

By the time Casandra Jones found her son's body sprawled on Nevada Street near their home on the east side of Detroit, the school bus that dropped him off was gone.

Zyair Harris, 13, was killed by oncoming traffic in April 2022 after his school bus driver failed to deploy the vehicle's safety stop sign and lights. The driver, Debra White, was supposed to drop him off in front of their home, Jones said, so the teen, who had autism spectrum disorder, wouldn't have to cross.

Zyair — who Jones described as smart and outgoing — still held family members' hands crossing the street or going into stores. Though his family knew him to be cautious, he risked running across the street. Losing Zyair stunned Jones and her younger daughter, who witnessed the fatal accident.

"It was awful, terrible," Jones said. "I was losing it."

The grief, a year and a half later, doesn't go away.

Across southeastern Michigan, children with autism have been assaulted on the bus. Bullied. Left with marks on their body. Even lost, only to be found in an empty bus more than an hour later, parents told the Detroit Free Press. They said that, despite state-mandated training, drivers and aides don't always understand how to react when a child's behavior spins out of their control, a circumstance that can become fraught fast in a moving vehicle.

Ann Arbor's school district was thrown into turmoil over the summer — with the superintendent ousted — after a video showed a bus aide smacking and restraining a 7-year-old boy screaming in terror. A lawsuit claims his mother was kept in the dark about the incident for five weeks. The district has defended its handling of the case, and a spokesman said the aide involved was removed from service when the incident was observed on video.

The Free Press identified a string of incidents on Michigan school buses involving autistic children reported by media outlets over the past five years, several leading to lawsuits against school districts and the third-party companies often tasked with transporting students. Advocates and experts say these incidents, while likely not widespread, are a problem that needs addressing through better training and hiring, particularly when the job of a bus driver or aide can be extraordinarily demanding and involve children who require specialized support.

Some children with autism struggle with transitions, and "the biggest transition to a student with autism we're going to make our entire school day is on a school bus," said Patrick Mulick, a behavior analyst and school administrator in Washington state who advocates for better training for school bus staff.

University of Southern California researchers noted in a 2017 report there were increasing media reports on incidents in which autistic children were lost, injured or even died. The researchers wrote that there is a "critical need" to address shortfalls in transportation that put vulnerable children at risk.

"That transition is from leaving the comforts of their own home and getting on these commercial vehicles that are driving around town and taking them to a place where there's high demand," Mulick said. "There's a lot of people, there's a lot of stimulation, and there's high expectations."

'She would point at buses and just cry'

Five-year-old Charlie Fox was missing for more than an hour before officials found her in an empty Lapeer Community Schools bus in a district lot in 2019. At the time, Charlie was nonverbal.

"For the longest time, she would point at buses and just cry when we would drive by them and then I would cry too, because I know how she felt," said Sarah Fox, Charlie's mother.

Now, Fox drives her daughter to school as well as to therapy appointments. She can still recall the terror she felt calling the district and its transportation division when Charlie didn't show up to a therapy appointment to which the bus was supposed to take her. Fox went door-to-door looking for her daughter because officials told her they'd dropped Charlie off with an adult. Finally, Fox received an update: Charlie was found still strapped to her seat on the bus.

Jared Field, a spokesman for Lapeer Community Schools, wrote in an emailed response to questions that "our drivers and bus aides are required to clear the bus when the bus returns to the garage. There’s also a sign that has to be posted in the back of the bus once it has been checked and cleared."

Across metro Detroit, parents of children with autism have raised alarms about bus safety. Among them:

• A mother in Dearborn told the district's school board in a May 2022 meeting that her 13-year-old son, who is nonverbal, was choked by his harness on the way to school. "By the time they got to school, his lips were blue, his eyes were red and he had red spots on his face that were a result of lack of oxygen," she said. The mother said two weeks passed and she still hadn't received answers from the district about what happened and that other parents had experienced problems with the third-party company hired by Dearborn. "The district is committed to addressing the safety needs of all current and future students and our HR department launched an investigation the very next morning to gather the facts surrounding this event," David Mustonen, a district spokesman, wrote to the Free Press in May 2022. Last month, Mustonen confirmed the district no longer contracts with the bus company district officials said was involved in the incident.

• A Detroit mom settled a lawsuit in Wayne County Circuit Court claiming that her 6-year-old son was restrained by a bus driver in late 2021. A video showed the driver sitting on the child, according to the suit. The driver, with a company contracted by Detroit Public Schools Community District, told the mother that her son was being "aggressive" on the bus, according to the lawsuit. The mother claimed Detroit Public Schools Community District administrators did not immediately share details of the incident with her but did open an investigation into the incident. The mother instead discovered the details after a video from that day was posted on Facebook. ABC Transportation, the bus company, in court filings wrote that it is "not liable for the criminal actions of its employees." Parties reached a settlement in the case for an undisclosed amount in July.

• Through his family, a then-13-year-old Walled Lake Consolidated Schools student with autism sued Dean Transportation after he was attacked by another student in September 2017 on the way home from school. The student who attacked him gouged his face and thrashed at his head. A bus aide and driver ignored his screams and didn't contact his parents, even though he walked off the bus with blood running down his face, the lawsuit claimed. A jury found that the transportation company was negligent, awarding $10,000 in the student's favor.

In Macomb County, Angela Uselman said her daughter Abby was bullied on the bus by a group of students and attacked by one student as they waited to get onto the bus. The November 2022 attack happened after Abby and the other student yelled at each other, Uselman said. Abby attends L'Anse Creuse High School North. Uselman said that the student who attacked Abby was allowed to ride the same bus after the attack.

"Because of her autism, Abby still to this day doesn't understand what she did so wrong. ... She screamed back at them and she got literally her head pounded," she said.

Abby attends school and rides the bus with other high school students, she is not in a self-contained program and many don't realize she's autistic at first, her mother said. Uselman noted that the district has improved its bus services recently, but wishes the district routinely assigned an aide to every high school bus.

"Older kids tend to be more rowdy, more vocal, more disruptive," she said. "Why are we not preemptively saying, 'You know what, it's a good idea to have someone on here because this bus driver who's supposed to be focusing on the road to get these kids to and from school alive can't do everything?' "

Erik Edoff, superintendent of L'Anse Creuse Public Schools, wrote in an email that the district requires training for all drivers and aides who work with students with disabilities.

"This is important for students with emotional as well as medical needs," he wrote.

What training is necessary?

Melissa Freel remembers the fear that washed over her son Bennett's face when his school district sent an empty school bus to pick him up and take him to Edison School in Ferndale in 2018. One morning, he didn't want to leave the house, Freel said. Before he exited, Freel asked the bus driver to understand that getting onto the bus was a big deal for her son, and it would ease Bennett's anxiety if the driver acted like they knew Freel.

Bennett walked out, and Freel said the driver asked, "Oh, by the way, where am I going?" Eventually, Freel started driving Bennett herself.

Small interactions like that one can throw any child off, especially first thing in the morning.

Katrina Morris, executive director of the Michigan Association for Pupil Transportation and transportation director for the West Shore Educational Service District in Ludington, teaches a class for transportation supervisors about serving students with disabilities. Drivers and aides can't take behavior personally, she said. And communication with students is key.

"They're trying to tell you something in their way," Morris said. "We just have to figure out what it is."

Bus aides must have medical training. Some districts also include aides and drivers in Crisis Prevention Intervention training to learn how to de-escalate situations and identify what triggers a student's behaviors, Morris said.

"You have to learn the child: It's not about the disability," she said. "We really stress that what works today, 99% probably is not going to work tomorrow. And tomorrow we're going to come right back to the drawing board and we're going to try something different."

A spokesman for the Michigan Department of Education wrote that bus drivers must attend extensive training to become drivers and maintain their credentials, including a class that involves learning about corporal punishment, restraint and seclusion laws, and must undergo a background check.

But Michigan is also what's known as a local control state, and "any reports involving students (e.g., neglected or mistreated) on buses are the responsibility of local districts," wrote William Disessa, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Education. That means in the event of an incident, it's up to a local school district to investigate.

For years, school districts have been grappling with a shortage of staff members, including a bus driver shortage and a shortage of paraprofessionals, aides who work with students with disabilities.

In the Dearborn case, the mother said the staff on her son's school buses, operated by a private company, seemed to rotate and that they appeared to lack training to work with students with disabilities.

The University of Southern California researchers questioned the use of private companies for transporting students with disabilities, writing that outsourced transportation appears to make it harder to identify who is accountable for preventing incidents. In one instance in New Jersey, the researchers found a district that switched transportation companies three times after three different incidents.

Colleen Allen, CEO and president of the Autism Alliance of Michigan, wrote in an emailed statement that the organization is "devastated" by the assault claims in Ann Arbor and that it will "continue to advocate for effective safety and behavioral training for any professional who interacts with children with autism and related disabilities, whether that occurs in the school building, on the playground, lunchroom, or a school bus. Until education and training is provided, we will continue to see these types of cases across Michigan."

At Detroit Public Schools Community District, spokeswoman Chrystal Wilson wrote that while the district uses a third-party company, the training for drivers and attendants who serve students goes beyond state requirements, including Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports program training and training around working with students with disabilities. In Zyair's case, Wilson wrote, "the driver was immediately removed from DPSCD service."

White, the bus driver who didn't deploy her stop sign or lights after dropping Zyair off on the opposite side of the street, was found guilty in March of child abuse in the second degree and failure to stop at the scene of a personal injury accident. White was sentenced to three years of probation and 200 hours of community service, according to court records.

Jones also settled a lawsuit in Wayne County Circuit Court against White and ABC Student Transportation for an undisclosed amount. But she does not feel justice has been done.

"There was a lot that she could have did to prevent it," she said of White.

In a recent Facebook post, Jones noted that Oct. 20 is Zyair's birthday and wrote: "I'm not ready for it."

Contact Lily Altavena: Laltavena@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Autistic students have died, been assaulted in Michigan bus incidents