Special-Ed Bus Crash Kills Four Young Students

I head some story in passing on Friday about an Indiana school-bus crash, but didn't think much about it -- it was part of the general buzz of sadness and disaster that we all make our way through as we follow the paper and the Web and the evening news.

Then on Saturday, I learned from a post on the blog Winter Ramblings that the bus in question was one transporting special-education students, and that all four of its young special-needs passengers were killed. And then, it was hard to think of anything else.

According to an AP report, a dump truck swerved out of its lane to avoid a stopped motor scooter. It clipped the back of the bus, which tipped over and slid in front of another Mack truck, which crushed its roof in. The bus driver was injured and is hospitalized; police are investigating but have yet to assign fault.

The first thing that went through my mind was seatbelts. I remember what a struggle it was to get the school district to install a proper carseat for my little three-year-old low-muscle-tone guy when he first went off to pre-K. But reports indicate that the students were properly restrained, and that restraints don't really make much of a difference when you're hit on the roof by a Mack truck.

The second thing that went through my mind was: I'm glad I don't have to put my kids on a school bus Monday morning. We did the bus thing for years, until I grew impatient with forty-minute travel times from a school ten minutes away. I've been lucky to be in a position where I can transport them myself, and now that they're going to the school next door, we don't need wheels to get to school at all.

Special-education school buses are a necessary evil for most parents, though, facilitating the transfer of our kids to schools outside of our neighborhood, but contributing sometimes to our feelings of powerlessness -- especially when sending our impossibly small and fragile three- and four-year-olds off -- and disconnect from the school experience. I do think school-bus rides can be positive experiences for some children, serving as a leisurely transition between home and school and an opportunity for social contact. But I also worry that overly long routes, lack of appropriate supervision, and time missed from the school day due to late arrivals and early departures can make the bus a bad bargain.

Of course, accidents like the one on Friday shouldn't figure into that thinking. Accidents can just as well happen to cars as to school buses, and at least as the facts stand now, it doesn't sound as if the bus driver did anything wrong (though I do wonder why there was apparently no aide on the bus).

It's just that I can remember waiting for that little bus at the end of the day, worrying if it was late, assuring myself that bad things don't happen to school buses. My heart goes out to the parents of those four children who never made it home. How cruelly unexpected, when we spend so much time advocating for our children and battling their disabilities and fighting for school services, to have death come out of nowhere and for no reason, through the very thing we do to help them grow and succeed.

According to Indystar.com, there will be a memorial service tonight at 7 p.m. for the four children -- Lauren Melin, 5; Kale Seabolt, 9; and Trevor Ingram and Tyler Geiger, 10. Maybe that's a good time for those of us far from the scene to hold our kids close for a moment, and say a prayer for those who are gone. If you'd like to contribute to a fund for the families, you can call the Twin Lakes Schools central office at (574) 583-7211 for information.

Read more: Special Needs News | Site of the Day | Twelve Things to Know About Your Child's Bus Ride