On Friday, Greenwich Schools superintendent Dr. Toni Jones, GHS principal Ralph Mayo, and GHS athletic director Peter Georgiou wrote to families of GHS freshman football players about an incident they described as disturbing that took place Thursday night on the team’s bus as it traveled back from West Haven.
While they said they were thankful that there was no accident and everyone arrived home safely, they wrote that the driver briefly drove the wrong way.
“Due to heavy traffic and construction detours on Interstate 95 in the Norwalk area, the bus driver needed to reenter the highway, but did so in the wrong direction,” they wrote.
The letter said the administration learned that thankfully there had been little oncoming traffic at the time due to a road closure beyond the highway work trucks, and that witnesses’ accounts were that the bus made a u-turn and proceeded to exit down the ramp.
“We made it very clear to the bus company, First Student, that this is extremely unacceptable and demanded a full investigation, including a GPS review of video footage from the bus,” the letter said. “We have insisted that this bus driver not be on any of our long routes after school hours moving forward, pending the results of this investigation.”
The letter assured families that should the investigation deem the account that they received be accurate, an intensive re-training will be conducted.
Further they said they asked the bus company to be proactive with additional training for their drivers to ensure this kind of incident does not happen again.
They thanked the football coaches who were on the bus for their attentiveness.
Last year, there was a controversy after the administration reacted to an incident involving a school bus driver operating in a very dangerous manner.
The deputy schools superintendent had witnessed the incident herself on North Street.
In April 2023 Dr. Ann Carabillo was behind a school bus leaving North Street School that she said crossed the double yellow line more than 15 times, straying into the oncoming lane. The district reacted by disqualifying a driver, Nadia Micourt, from transporting Greenwich students.
In response, all school bus drivers in Greenwich failed to report to work, calling in sick the first day after April vacation, causing quite a disruption for students and their families.
The district quickly emailed, texted and robocalled families at 6:00am, but that wasn’t enough notice for many people.
The district explained they could not fire a particular bus driver, only “disqualify” him or her. Jones explained at the time, “The contract is with First Student. It’s not our union and it’s not our employee.”
But the situation did not end with the disqualification.
Several bus drivers, who are members of the members the AFL-CIO Transportation Workers Union Local 100, and their leaders, showed up at a BOE meeting and left leaflets disparaging Dr. Carabillo on car windshields. They testified during public comment that they believed the district’s response was draconian.
First Student School Bus Drivers All Call in Sick: No Service for Thousands of Students
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