LOUISVILLE, Ky. (Mar. 11, 2007) — The first general session of the 16th Transporting Students with Disabilities & Preschoolers conference began March 11 with a welcome speech by Kay Kennedy, the director for the Kentucky Department of Education’s division of district operations. She spoke of her niece Mary, now a 13-year-old special needs middle school student who is confined to a wheelchair and has ridden the school bus for the past seven years. The goal of Mary and students across the nation like her is to be regarded as “one of the gang,” Kennedy said, and this is accomplished simply be being able to go to school each day.

Kennedy described the influence a certain Lexington school bus driver, simply known as “Miss Sherry,” has had on Mary’s development. Kennedy thanked “Miss Sherry” as well as the approximately 400 special needs professionals in attendance from 37 states for the jobs they perform each day, and for striving to better themselves and their co-workers by attending the conference.

Then, what ensued left nary a dry eye in the house.

Stephanie Susavage keynoted the affair by recalling for the audience the life – and death – of her daughter Cynthia, a little girl who passed away two weeks before Christmas of 2002 and just two months after her sixth birthday from injuries suffered from being strangled on her school bus the previous March.

Cynthia suffered from Laden Batten’s disease, a neurological disorder that turned a vivacious “blonde hair, brown-eyed pixie,” said Stephanie, into a little girl who lost the ability to speak and who could no longer keep herself upright without assistance.

The local intermediate unit (IU) charged with caring for Cynthia improperly secured her in an obsolete safety vest rather than in a gorilla seat, which uses five-point restraints to provide ample head, trunk, hip, and leg support for larger children with special needs. The morning of Cynthia’s injuries was the first time the district secured her in the vest, after repeated pleas from Stephanie and her husband to help their daughter. That very morning, as her parents waved good-bye to the bus, Cynthia began slipping off her bus seat, as the vest was put on backward with the zipper side to the front. The vest became tangled around her neck, and she slowly began to strangle to death. She was unable to shout out to the bus driver, and the driver could not see Cynthia in the rearview mirror.

Attorney and pupil transportation consultant Peggy Burns said a judge later found the IU to be “deliberately indifferent to its duty” as well as failing to adequately train the contracted bus company. The case was settled.

“Never have we had a conference kickoff that will illustrate for you exactly why we are here,” she said.