A Maryland mother was stunned after receiving a call from her child’s school saying her 6-year-old son had been dropped off somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be.
Shatira Gray told CBS station WJZ that she had informed Victory Villa Elementary ahead of time that she would be picking up her son Jeremiah from a daycare center on Wednesday, Nov. 12. But later that afternoon, she received a call from the school office explaining that he had boarded the wrong bus — and that another parent had contacted the school after finding him.
“So you’re telling me my son is with a random person?” she remembered responding during the call.
Charles Herndon, a spokesman for Baltimore County Public Schools, described the situation as a miscommunication that was quickly resolved. He said the school mistakenly placed Jeremiah on his regular bus route instead of the one that would have taken him to daycare.
Students on that route typically walk home or are picked up by a caregiver at the neighborhood stop.
Herndon explained that Jeremiah was riding with classmates, and one of those students took him home. That child’s parent then notified the school, which immediately contacted Gray. School staff picked Jeremiah up and brought him back to campus, where his family retrieved him.
Gray told WJZ she was far from the school when she learned what happened. After speaking with her son later, she recalled him saying, “A lady put him on the bus.”
She emphasized that Jeremiah has never ridden his assigned neighborhood bus before. He is always dropped off or picked up directly from school or the daycare facility.
“My grandson cried when he got home because he thought it was his fault that he got dropped off that bus at the wrong location,” his grandmother told the outlet.
This isn’t the first time a child in the same district has been misplaced. Last summer, WJZ reported that a 6-year-old kindergartener with special needs was mistakenly sent home on a bus following the first day of summer school at Pleasant Plains Elementary.
Gray said the school apologized and told her they are implementing additional safeguards to prevent similar mistakes in the future.
