CVUSD holds meeting following incident of student left in vehicle

A board meeting for the Coachella Valley Unified School District was scheduled Thursday night. Some parents and employees raised concerns over a 4-year-old special needs student who was left in a school vehicle “unattended” for more than four hours on Monday.

Some CVUSD employees say the incident could have been prevented if the driver was transporting the student in a bus with a ‘Child Safety Alert System’ inside.

“Please don’t put a price on safety. We all know what happened this week,” said Sergio Duran, a CVUSD mechanic and parent during public comment.

Another employee who spoke during public comment said, “Why do we have to wait for something bad to happen to get this Child Check going.”

They were referring to a system that was introduced about two years ago, aimed to ensure all students riding school district busses are accounted for. Duran says only 11 busses have the program installed, and of those 11 only a few are in service. Duran says after the district laid off four mechanics, they’ve been behind in fixing busses and getting the child alert system installed on busses.

“We don’t have the man power. Many of our bus drivers have to utilize ‘white fleet’ and these vehicles don’t have that system in place,” said Duran.

White Fleet is the type of vehicle the four-year-old special needs student was left in, according to district officials.

“It takes at least, to start off, a day, day and half, without interruptions [to install the child alert system], but the day crew gets interrupted at every moment, ’cause drivers come in, and they [mechanics] have to drop everything and fix it,” Duran said.

Erik Lee, CVUSD’s Assistant Superintendent of Business Services, says they’ve recently hired a new supervisor to assist mechanics.

“Helping them prioritize, helping them work on optimizing which repairs they start first,” said Lee.

Superintendent Gomez also addressed the incident.

“We’re going to be relentless, and we’re going to be dogmatic, and we’re going to be persistent and the fact that if things happen, we’re going to hold people accountable,” Gomez said.

“I hope they realize that what’s more important is child’s life, not money. We can find money somewhere, but we can’t replace a human life,” Duran said.

According to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, deputies responded to a report of an unattended child in a vehicle at 5 p.m. on May 20. After investigating, it was determined that the child had been in the vehicle for a “substantial length of time” according to the Sheriff’s Department news release. The student was taken to a local hospital to be checked out and was “medically cleared” after the evaluation.

In a written statement provided to News Channel 3, CVUSD’s Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Erik Lee said “The District was made aware that an elementary aged student was picked up for school by a district driver but was not dropped off at a District school site,” said Lee.

The driver of the vehicle, who was described as a longtime employee, was placed on administrative leave. The driver agreed to a blood test, said Lee.