Bus Driver Can Return To Route
A Mead School District bus driver, suspended from her job with pay two weeks ago, has been allowed to return to her route.
Monica Taylor, 50, has been a bus driver for 25 years, the past 12 years with the Mead School District. She was involved in a head-on collision with a pickup truck while driving children home from school Jan. 6.
No one involved in the accident was cited by the Washington State Patrol, which investigated the collision.
The accident occurred on the Madison Extension, a narrow, winding road off Day Mount Spokane Road, east of Highway 2.
Nine days later, the district suspended the bus driver while investigating the accident themselves, following complaints from a small group of parents.
Monday night, district officials told parents the driver would return to her route.
“Our conclusion is that she should drive the route,” said Bill Mester, district superintendent.
“We did a thorough investigation and took appropriate action,” said Gary Ferney, assistant superintendent of personnel.
Union representatives, Taylor’s lawyer, the district transportation director, the pickup truck driver and his parents were also at the meeting.
“I wonder how thorough this investigation was, since nobody talked to me about it, and I was the one who was hit,” pickup driver Paul Bolich, 18, said at the meeting.
Ferney said district officials were at the accident scene, took measurements and pictures, talked to the investigating officer and reviewed reports.
Bolich suffered a cut lip and torn chest cartilage in the accident.
District officials declined to comment or discuss parent complaints that Taylor has a history of problems handling her bus, saying it is a personnel matter.
“These issues don’t all go together,” said Mester. “We have to review the other complaints with the bus driver.”
Cindy Lease, a parent of two children on the bus, is still furious.
“That bus is not a safe place for my children,” said Lease. “They will not be riding that bus.”
Ferney said Taylor did not drive the route Tuesday, and wasn’t planning to drive Wednesday. He didn’t know when she would return to work.
, DataTimes