A Halifax mother says she was left feeling terrified after her eight-year-old twin daughters were more than 4½ hours late returning home from school on the bus, prompting her to call police amid a lack of communication from school and transportation officials.
Chloe Daigle’s children attend École Mer et Monde in Halifax’s south end and are due to arrive home at their bus stop — roughly five kilometres from the school — around 3:05 p.m. AT daily.
Daigle said she received an email Monday informing her the bus would be 25 minutes late. Soon after, she received a voicemail message saying the bus would be over an hour late.
She waited patiently at the stop. When the bus did not show up after 4 p.m., she began to worry.
“It was a terrifying, crazy moment of not knowing where my kids are,” Daigle told CBC Radio’s Information Morning Nova Scotia.
Daigle said she tried calling the bus company, Transco, and the school, but was not getting any answers.
Desperate to find her daughters, she called police at 6:20 p.m. The person who answered said she wasn’t the first concerned parent to call about the missing bus.
“Meanwhile, some parents from my kids’ class, they started driving to find the bus,” said Daigle.
About 20 minutes later, a woman from the police department called Daigle back saying they had found the bus, and that police officials had spoken to her kids. They were safe and on their way home.
Daigle said she was waiting at her kids’ regular bus stop when a woman came up to her and told her the bus was parked about a block away. She said she started running and could see her girls standing with a bus driver.
“I was just so happy to hug my girls at the end of this horrible situation,” she said of their reunion around 7:40 p.m., four hours and 35 minutes after their bus was due to arrive.
She said her daughter told her the children were shouting at the driver that they were going the wrong way. One of her daughters told her she was crying because she needed to pee but wasn’t allowed off the bus.
Daigle said the police explained that the original bus driver got lost, and another bus driver had to come take over.
But she never heard directly from Transco or École Mer et Monde during the ordeal, calling the lack of communication “unacceptable” and “unbelievable.”
“I had to call the police to find my kids. That doesn’t make sense,” said Daigle.
Conseil scolaire acadien provincial (CSAP), Nova Scotia’s Francophone school board, issued an apology on Tuesday, saying it cannot imagine the worry and stress the situation caused.
Michel Collette, head of the school board, wrote that its communication with Transco did not meet its expectations.
Collette said the board would be taking a number of steps to review the situation, including identifying gaps in communication between Transco, CSAP, and the families of École Mer et Monde.
The board said it will also work with Transco to review the emergency communication protocol, inform all CSAP families of this protocol, and also ask Transco to directly contact the families of students that were on the bus to provide feedback on the incident.
The statement did not elaborate on what exactly happened, and the board declined a request for an interview.
Transco — a subsidiary of First Student, which operates more than 900 vehicles in Quebec — also declined an interview request Tuesday, but issued a statement saying it regrets the “inconvenience and concern” the situation has caused.
“We are working in partnership with CSAP to review what led to the delay and how to ensure it does not happen again,” spokesperson Jen Biddinger wrote.
“As part of this process, we will also examine communication protocols. We recognize the importance of providing timely information to families about their bus service.”
Biddinger added: “Transco values our relationship with CSAP. We fully appreciate the trust placed in us and remain committed to delivering on our promise to provide reliable and safe transportation every school day.”
Incident ‘very concerning’: education minister
On Tuesday afternoon, Education Minister Becky Druhan said some delays are expected at the beginning of the school year, “but what happened with the CSAP busing … was really very concerning.”
“I will be asking the CSAP to report fully on that to ensure and to identify what steps they’re going to take to ensure that it never happens again,” said Druhan at Province House.
Druhan said she didn’t have details on what happened or why.
Conseil scolaire acadien provincial announced in May 2022 it had selected the company to provide transportation to and from its schools.
Daigle said she planned to drive her kids to school on Tuesday morning.
“I cannot rely on the bus anymore,” she said.
The major delay — and a lack of communication from the school and transportation officials — prompted some parents to call police. Paul Palmeter has the story.
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