Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, May 25, 1995                   TAG: 9505250103
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

KIDS SAY THEY WERE TOLD TO TAKE A HIKE

The Stonewall Jackson Middle School students said they were ordered off the bus at a convenience store on Garden City Boulevard - more than a mile from one of the two stops on the route.

Dee Ann Gray, mother of one student, said the children told her that the driver, who was substituting on that route, got angry, started cursing at them and told them to get off the bus.

"They had to walk more than a mile down Garden City Boulevard, which has no sidewalks," Gray said. "The kids were straggling down the road in the heat."

Her daughter, Sarah, said the driver became angry because some children were arguing and yelling.

School officials are investigating the incident.

Chauncey Logan, transportation director, said the driver, whom he would not identify, denies that he used profanity or became angry.

"He's very religious and this would be totally out of character for him," he said.

"He's not the type of driver to put children off the bus. I hate to see him demonized."

Logan said the driver is a regular driver on another route who was filling in on the Garden City route on short notice.

The driver apparently was told by the transportation staff that there was only one stop on the Garden City route - and there might have been a misunderstanding about the location, Logan said.

"He feels badly about what happened, but I do not believe he put children off the bus," Logan said. "I think he had been told there was one stop and he let the students off where he thought they should go."

Gray said she and several parents were worried as they waited at the regular bus stop at Garden City Cafe and the bus did not arrive at its usual time of 2:15 p.m.

She said some children came into sight about 2:50 p.m., crying and lugging their books.

The bus takes children directly from Jackson Middle School to Garden City with no intervening stops. There are only two stops on the route: one is at Garden City Cafe, more than a mile south of Horne's Food Market, where the children were told to get off the bus. The second stop is farther south in Garden City.

About 25 children get off at the first stop, and about a half-dozen get off at the second stop, Gray said.

Rebecca Baber, who works at Horne's Food Market, said she knew that something had happened when all of the children got off at the store.

After the children were off, Baber said, the driver wheeled the bus around and went back north toward the school.

"The children said they had been kicked off. They started walking down the road," she said.

It's the second embarrassing incident for the city schools' transportation department this spring. On May 8, a driver parked his bus for the night with an 8-year-old boy still aboard, asleep.