Rockland County, NY – Driver Charged with Endangerment in Bus Incident; Not an Isolated Incident Say Parents

Rockland County, NY – A bus driver in the East Ramapo Central School District has been charged with Endangering the Welfare of a Child after dropping a group of young students off on the side of a busy road just over a week ago.

Police say that Floyd James, 53, was driving students home from Cheder Chabad in Spring Valley on Friday September 5th when the incident occurred. James, a Chestnut Ridge resident was approximately 30 minutes behind schedule when he dropped off a group of boys, ages six through nine, on the side of Route 306, on a day when temperatures topped 90 degrees.

The bus was traveling southbound on Route 306 when the bus driver elected to drop off the students in the area of Mariner Way and Brick Church Road, approximately two tenths of a mile from their designated bus stop, according to Lieutenant Mark Emma of the Ramapo Police Department.

“They were children were supposed to be dropped off at the corner of 306 and Fessler Drive,” Lieutenant Emma told VIN News. “He dropped them off early. The reason is unknown.”

Sources in East Ramapo told VIN News that while some of the children who were dropped off prematurely lived fairly close by, as indicated by Lieutenant Emma, others lived over a mile away.

Lieutenant Emma noted that Route 306 is a busy thoroughfare, with minimal shoulders and only sporadic patches of sidewalk that do not run continuously in the area where the boys were left. Parents told police that their boys were tired and dehydrated after their walk home in the exceptionally hot weather.

“These were little kids, not teenagers and they were endangered by the bus driver,” said Lieutenant Emma. “It was his obligation to get him safely to their stop.”

James was arraigned this morning before Judge Simon in the Town of Ramapo Justice Court and is being released on his own recognizance. He will be facing misdemeanor charges when he appears in court on October 7th.

According to outraged East Ramapo parents, this is not the first time that an incident like this has occurred in the district.

Chaim Saperstein, a parent at Yeshiva Darchei Noam in Suffern, contacted the school district after a group of children, including his own son, were dropped off on the side of the road during a heavy snow and told to walk home in November, 2012.

“The bus driver got to the corner of S. Parker Drive and Forshay Road and it started snowing very hard, with blinding winds,” said Saperstein. “The driver panicked and instead of saying ‘let’s pull over and stay here where it is safe,’ he told everyone to get off the bus. There was one boy on the bus, who was about 12 or 13 years old who lived two and a half miles away and much of the way home he would have had to walk on Route 306 where there is no shoulder, no sidewalk, no nothing.”

Saperstein said several of the boys who lived nearby walked home, while the rest were driven home by the Rosh Yeshiva’s wife, who passed by and saw the boys standing in the street.

Saperstein emailed the district the next day but received no response. Saperstein continued contacting the transportation office, eventually reaching someone on the phone, who told him that the bus driver had been let go.

“They said ‘We fired him, what more do you want from us?’” said Saperstein, who told the district that they were responsible to better educate their drivers.