Oct. 30, 2008 — The St. Croix School District held a meeting Thursday to discuss with parents from Williams Delight the cancellation earlier this week of buses in the neighborhood. District officials made sure to include anyone who might help the parents and schools work out the problem — school officials, representatives from the bus company and the Department of Education, bus drivers and police.
All that was missing was parents.
Only a handful of parents, maybe five or six, made the drive Thursday from Williams Delight to the cavernous auditorium of the St. Croix Educational Complex.
"We're going t have to look at the issues," said St. Croix Superintendent Gary Molloy. "But until we get parents involved, there's not much we can do."
Molloy said he scheduled the meeting for the Education Complex because he didn't think the community center in Williams Delight would hold the anticipated crowd. There are eight buses that typically transport students in the neighborhood, he said, and each bus holds 65 students, leading Molloy to expect at least 300 or 400 parents.
That turned out not to be the case.
The service to the neighborhood was canceled Monday after students and non-students pelted buses with eggs and rocks. Some of the eggs were frozen, Molloy said.
The incident was the culmination of an increasing tide of disobedience and even violence against buses in the neighborhood, Molloy said.
"I did not want to cancel the buses, but safety is primary," he said. "The incidents are getting worse, the issue is getting out of control. Williams Delight is not the only area affected, but it's by far the worst."
Molloy said he slated the meeting in the hope that "working together, we can solve this." So he was "very, very disappointed" that so few parents turned out.
Had parents been there, they might have heard an earful.
"The students — your children — are getting harder to deal with," said Claude Fredericks, school bus field supervisor for Abramson Enterprises, the company contracted to provide bus service to the schools. "These are violent acts. These are criminal acts."
The company's number-one concern is safety, Fredericks said. Disruptive behavior aboard buses has led to accidents, he said, and children on the buses can be injured by objects thrown from outside. Under the circumstances, the company felt it was safer to cancel the service, even though it loses revenue when it doesn't cover a run.
The activities that led to the cancellation long ago passed the point of pranks or mischief, said Sgt. Charles Orange, the V.I. Police Department's school security supervisor.
"This is not a joke," he said. "This is not funny. Someone is going to get hurt. If we catch them, we're going t prosecute them."
Some parents he's dealt with have no better an attitude than the juveniles he's contacting them about, Orange said.
"Some of the parents, you can't talk to them," he said.
Bus driver Judith Lewis-Figuero said she and the other drivers have gotten "fed up with Williams Delight," adding that she "almost quit her job" over such incidents.
The adults in the neighborhood need to stand up and start demanding better behavior from their children, she said.
"I'm asking parents, please talk to your kids," she said. "Please. Something has to be done."
Fellow bus driver John Bruney echoed her sentiments.
"It's time for parents to take responsibility for what their children are doing," he said.
Molloy said he would try to schedule a second meeting, this time in Williams Delight, in the hope of drawing enough parents that they can begin working together to resolve the issue.
In the meantime, the buses are not going into Williams Delight.
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