LEE COUNTY - Four in Your Corner is getting results for one family whose little girl was forced to wait for her school bus, which has been running late each and every day of this school year.
Sometimes she has had to wait all alone for more than an hour. Now district officials are changing the entire bus route to make sure this won't happen again.
10 year old Cali is sick and tired of waiting for her school bus. She says sometimes she has to wait all alone at the bus stop for more than an hour until the bus finally arrives. She tells us it’s scary, "Because anything could happen."
Despite numerous calls to district officials, Cali's mother Amber says she has gotten nowhere. That's why she turned to Four in your Corner. “I'm hoping that you can give me some answers on where to go from this point on."
A day after our reported aired, school officials finally investigated the situation and determined bus number 1070 has been late because of the following issues:
- It's a long bus route
- The bus encounters numerous railroad tracks, requiring it to stop
- The driver is slower than many others we're told she is extremely cautious
But now, one day later, things have only gotten worse.
Thursday morning Cali had to wait for her bus for over an hour and, when Cali's mother called her school, the school mistakenly told her Cali had gotten there on time.
"They, in fact, called me back about 15 minutes later and told me that they had been mistaken and Cali was just getting off from a sub bus," says Amber.
The district claims Cali's bus, number 1070, was running so late they had to send another bus. The driver of bus number 1000 went to pick her up but claims Cali wasn't there so he never stopped the bus.
Amber says that’s a lie.
After Cali's mother complained, the district sent a third bus to pick her up.
With all of these additional problems district officials have now decided to change the bus route altogether. They are also changing drivers and putting a second driver on standby in case of any more problems.
Cali hopes these changes will smooth out any bumps in the road ahead and let her focus on finishing the fourth grade.
We're told the district's transportation supervisor rode Cali's bus this morning and, based upon what he observed, he then decided to make some of these changes.
