One afternoon in early March, Daniela watched as her daughter got off the bus as she regularly did.
She noticed bumps on her face and immediately got scared. She urgently called Springfield Estates Elementary School, where her daughter, who is autistic, is in kindergarten. The bus transports fewer than 10 students with disabilities home every day, she said.
When Daniela, who asked not to be fully named, asked her daughter what happened, she responded, “Boo-boo, mommy. Band-Aid! Band-Aid!”
It took over a week, but then Daniela asked to review video footage from the bus. It showed another student inappropriately touching her daughter, she said.
“I saw the kid touch my daughter, put his hands in her private parts, and then he was pushing my daughter’s hands in his private parts,” Daniela said.
She contacted police to make them aware, and learned other students may have experienced something similar.
When Lisa Centeno, another mom of a kindergarten-aged son, learned about it, she contacted the principal immediately. Then, she learned her son, who is also autistic, had been assaulted on the school bus.
Video footage, Centeno said, showed another student who appeared to be hitting the back of her son’s head and pushing it.
Now, the Springfield moms are urging the school system to make sure students with disabilities across the county are treated properly.
“We’re supposed to send our kids from school, because we’re supposed to think they’re safe, right?” Daniela said. “They need to be training, they need to be following up. The drivers, the attendants, everything.”
In a statement, a school system spokesman said the region assistant superintendent, chief of schools and transportation department are in touch with the impacted families to address their concerns.
“Due to state and federal privacy laws, we cannot comment on specific cases about individual students,” the district said in a statement.
Meanwhile, detectives from Fairfax County police’s Child Abuse Squad are investigating and “working closely with Fairfax County Public Schools to gather all relevant information,” the department said.
The bus driver, the moms said, has been placed on administrative leave.
At the start of the school year, there was an attendant on the bus, Centeno said, but after a few weeks, that changed.
The pair had been pleading to get extra help because their kids “kept unbuckling themselves, getting up, standing up before the bus actually came to a stop. They were mostly all the time in distress getting off the bus, and now it kind of makes sense why they were unbuckling themselves prematurely,” Centeno said.
Their advocacy was unsuccessful, Centeno said, because a bus attendant isn’t in their students’ Individualized Education Plans, or IEPs. She was also told the department was experiencing staffing challenges.
“We’re trying to advocate so there is an aide on every special needs bus, regardless if it’s in the IEP or not,” Centeno said.
A school system spokesman said there are now two bus attendants on that bus each afternoon, but Daniela and Centeno’s kids are now on a different one.
“She can’t say to me, ‘Mommy, this has happened to me. Mommy, somebody’s touching me. Mommy, this kid’s doing something with me. And that’s so frustrating for me and my husband,” Daniela said.
The school district is still reviewing more video footage, Daniela and Centeno said, but they’re hoping for an apology from the school system’s transportation department and for accountability, so that other parents of students with disabilities can feel comfortable putting their kids on a similar bus.
“We’re advocating for our kids, but other parents need to be aware of the situation that they’re putting their kids in, getting on the bus,” Centeno said.
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