After son's head injury, Raleigh mom says bus drivers need aides
A Raleigh mother said she had to take her 6-year-old son to get stitches to his forehead after another child slammed his head into a window on a school bus.
She's not blaming the school or the bus driver, instead she is saying the driver needed help.
Autumn-Joi Barrett, the host of Middays radio show on K97.5, said she went into panic mode when she first saw her son, Xavier, with a bandage on his head. But it wasn't until she ripped the bandage off that she realized how bad the wound was.
She said the cut above his right eyebrow was so deep that she had to take him to the emergency room, where he received stitches.
Barrett said her son's school, Sycamore Creek Elementary School, has worked with her to find out exactly what happened, but she said the real problem is overcrowding on the buses.
Barrett said many of the bus drivers aren't able to keep tabs on everything that happens on their buses because there are too many students on them.
"There needs to be some sort of system in place where we can have people volunteer to be on the bus and be bus aides," Barrett said.
A Wake County Schools spokesperson said the child was injured while he and another student were horse playing on the bus. The bus driver pulled over and tended to the child, according to the district.
"I can't look at that and say it's horseplay," Barrett said. "Horesplay may require a bandaid, not stitches."
"If there are parents volunteers in schools, why can't there be volunteers on the bus?" Barrett said. "I'm sure there are plenty of stay-at-home parents that would not mind riding a bus in the afternoon."
