Kids are getting lost boarding the wrong school bus home. Parents want answers

It started with a post in an Ottawa parenting Facebook group for children born in 2020, who started junior kindergarten this week.

"Today my three-year-old kindergartener accidentally took the wrong bus after school."

Amid the dozens of distressed reactions and supportive comments from other moms, several more chimed in to say the exact same thing happened to their kids this week at different schools in Ottawa. Three-year-olds, during their first-ever week of school, all somehow wound up on wrong buses at the end of the school day.

In some cases, their parents had no idea where their children were. CBC News spoke with several mothers who said this happened to them. But the issue also extends beyond Ottawa, and isn't just affecting the youngest kids. The parents whose children were briefly lost say they just want accountability.

"I feel like there's no check-system happening," said Alyssia Klyne, whose three-year-old son Preston boarded the wrong bus Wednesday. It was his second day of school and first day riding the bus.

Klyne says she didn't even know anything was amiss until the school bus rolled up at the end of the day and Preston walked off, alone, without his older sister, and Klyne asked the bus driver where she was. 

"I'm like 'OK, but where is my daughter? Also, where are all the other kids on this bus?' And he was like, 'Oh, no, this isn't even his bus. They put him on the wrong bus,'" she told CBC News.

Kazia Peplinskie, also of Ottawa, was at her own bus stop waiting for her three-year old Wednesday. It was her daughter's first day of junior kindergarten (JK). When she didn't climb down the stairs, Peplinskie realized she wasn't on the bus at all.

"What went through my mind is I hope she is safe and with an adult," Peplinskie said. "I was more worried about whether she was feeling scared."

Protocols to ensure kids board the correct bus are typically the responsibility of school boards and individual schools, said Nancy Daigneault, the executive director of School Bus Ontario, a non-profit advocacy group. And policies differ across the province, she added in email statement.

"Many schools/boards have tags for the really young kids — JK, SK [senior kindergarten], Grade 1 and even Grade 2 — to ensure they get on right bus," Daigneault wrote. 

But it's not just an Ontario issue. In Saint John, N.B., social media has been blowing up with school bus horror stories from parents this first week back, said Nicole Murphy, who has two children, ages 10 and 14. Kids are being put on the wrong buses, being let off at the wrong stops, or being told there's no space for them and made to walk home, Murphy alleged.

Her teen daughter was told this week there was no room for her on the bus, Murphy said. Luckily, she had a cell phone, and Murphy was able to pick her up. But the same wasn't true for her friend's six-year-old, who Murphy says boarded the wrong bus and was missing for 40 minutes.

"No one knew where he was," Murphy said. "Something needs to happen. It's just not safe."