“Hunter has had a fall and we’re trying to calm her.”

That’s the message that sent Dawnae Whittlesey running out her door on a Tuesday afternoon nearly four weeks ago.

Her daughter’s wheelchair had toppled when her bus made its first turn, the caller from the school district’s transportation office said. The driver had neglected to latch it correctly. Ordway staff were trying to calm Hunter down, so the driver could continue the route. But they were having difficulty, so Hunter would be home late.

Whittlesey did not like the sound of that plan. There had been small accidents at Ordway before, that she had let the school handle. But something in her gut told her this was different. Mother’s instinct? Or maybe it was that her daughter had had emergency brain surgery just a month before.

Whittlesey doesn’t know what prompted her to say, no, stop, I’m coming. All she knew was that she needed to get Hunter off that bus.

When she arrived at Ordway, her daughter was still on board with at least two other students nearby. Hunter’s physical therapist, her teacher, principal and bus driver were all there. They had righted her up and examined her for bruises, giving careful attention to her shaved head and the 8-inch incision that ran across it. Hunter had an icepack on her knee and a bruise on her wrist, but otherwise seemed unharmed, they told Whittlesey. She had even stopped crying.

Whittlesey still insisted on getting Hunter off the bus, though. She unbuckled her seatbelt and embraced her, preparing for the lift. But as soon as Whittlesey stood her up, Hunter started screaming; her neck hurt.

And then they discovered the bump. It was on Hunter’s head, so suddenly, this was serious; everybody knew about the surgery. The school nurse, who had arrived on the scene just after Hunter’s mother did, made the call: We should involve the paramedics.

They, in turn, decided that it was time to involve Seattle Children’s Hospital.

Nothing urgent, no need for an ambulance, they said. Just to be safe, because of the surgery.

On the way over, Whittlesey’s worry grew, as it became apparent that Hunter had no memory of the accident.

“She would keep asking the same question over and over, ‘What are we going to have for dinner?’” Whittlesey recalled. “I’d say ‘chicken,’ and two minutes later, she’d ask again.”

A CAT scan, a CT scan, spinal X-rays, a barrage of tests. Her 11-year-old had a concussion and whiplash.

A long road to recovery

Three weeks later, Hunter is still suffering from the side effects of the accident, which isn’t unusual but is tough, especially for a kid with unique learning needs.

Before the accident, she would spend hours each day working on online modules. Now, she can only handle 20 or 30 minutes at a time, her father Fred said.

“She can’t do much mental intensity because –—I didn’t know this, but — that can actually cause more brain damage,” he explained.

Similarly, she can’t watch her favorite show, “Dora the Explorer,” for more than 20 minutes before her head hurts. And even simple board games are too much, Hunter’s mother said.

“We were playing Ratatat Cat, a numbers game, last night and she couldn’t decide whether the 2 or 3 was lower,” Dawnae said. “That was so — years ago, she knew that.”

Hunter has been going to school per usual, but she doesn’t have the stamina right now to learn new things or participate in physical activities. Instead, her mom said, she practices math she learned two years ago and her teachers read to her aloud. She can’t be in PE or recess. She can’t use the pumper handles on her wheelchair to move autonomously. And she probably won’t make it to the outdoor education trip at Camp Seymour in April.

As of last Tuesday, she’s back on the bus, though.

The driver that caused the accident was put on administrative leave and Hunter now has a new driver, who Dawnae said is “very thorough” — plus a paraprofessional to ensure her safety.

A series of errors

But the Whittleseys still want answers.

Hunter’s original driver had worked for the district since 2013 and, according to her parents, had been driving Hunter, unfastening and refastening her wheelchair twice a day, five days a week, for at least a year.

“It’s not like he didn’t understand how to do it or it was new to him,” Dawnae said.

Whatever happened, it was really sloppy, Hunter’s father said. Federal law requires a wheelchair to be anchored at four points, so for a wheelchair to flip over means that not one, but two points must have been neglected.

“If you have three of four correct, it can’t tip over,” Fred explained.

The Whittleseys wonder if the task was just too demanding for the 61-year-old driver, who they said complained to them about back problems and difficulty bending down to attach the wheelchair’s anchors on several occasions.

Or maybe he felt rushed. The procedure takes a few minutes, Hunter’s mother said. And Hunter’s father remembers the driver complaining about the pressure of the run; he had to race back to the bus barn and switch buses before picking up the other kids, he said.

Her father has concerns about how school staff handled the incident. Why weren’t the police called to investigate?

“I thought it would be beneficial with an event that was clearly driver negligence, that there would be an immediate police interview to see if the driver was impaired,” he said.

The only person that put a call in to the police, though, was Whittlesey himself, several hours later. He spoke with Police Sergeant Trevor Ziemba, who generated an information-only report, ultimately determining that there did not appear to be criminal intent or activity requiring further investigation.

“Criminal” was the word that came to mind, however, when Whittlesey learned from his wife that Ordway staff had not called the paramedics outright. “Clearly they intended just to put Hunter back upright and send her home on the bus,” he said. “Truly criminal behavior.”

Hunter’s 13-year-old brother pointed out that there might be a video of the incident, which could help the family better understand what happened. Whittlesey has concerns that his daughter was knocked out; he can’t be sure, he said, since the school district changed its account of the mishap.

“We were initially told that Hunter lost consciousness from the impact,” he said. “And then they said, ‘No, she wasn’t unconscious.’ Well, which is it? The driver had told somebody that. The driver was then put on administrative leave and disappeared from the story.”

Past problems

With their history, the Whittleseys may have reason to distrust the district. They’ve been here before; questioning school practices or procedures and getting no answers.

Two years ago, in March 2014, they filed a complaint with the State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction alleging that the Bainbridge Island School District had violated the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The chief claim? The district was shortchanging Hunter and four other special needs students by sending them home on the bus before the regular school day ended.

Whittlesey said he tried to raise these concerns with district staff privately in January, to no avail: “I sat in a room with probably eight district people and asked a simple question. Because my daughter’s on an individualized education program (IEP), they have to count every minute with her; it’s very detailed. I just asked the question, ‘How is it possible that she’s getting 1,710 minutes of instruction per week if she’s being pulled out of class 20 minutes early every day?’ And nobody would say a word. I said, ‘I want an answer to my question.’ And nobody would say a word. They never responded to me.”

Once OSPI got involved, the district admitted its wrongdoing; “due to its transportation schedule,” the district had manipulated the students’ schedules for 125 days, seven of which were after the complaint was filed. To address the violation, the district proposed to provide the students with four minutes of compensatory service for every school day they were sent home early. OSPI objected and ordered the district to provide 10 minutes per day, equivalent to 21 hours, instead.

For Whittlesey, the whole exercise was a lesson in the district’s avoidance strategies. “The district’s style is, we’re just not going to respond and we’ll only comply when we’re forced to,” he said.

Looking ahead

The school district’s investigation of the Feb. 23 incident is ongoing and the bus driver is still on administrative leave, Associate Superintendent Peter Bang-Knudsen said.

“I don’t have a specific timeline, but eventually, there will be a decision in terms of what the next steps are for the employee,” he said.

This was not caused by a failure in safety protocol, Bang-Knudsen said, but by failure of the driver.

“Every bus driver, when trained, practices with a wheelchair and using a ramp,” he said. “They’re given hands-on training for how to properly secure students that require additional support.

“We know the driver failed to secure the wheelchair, which of course is failing the safety protocol as far as what you need to do to make sure any student is safe inside the bus.”

Bang-Knudsen said he did not know the intricacies of how drivers are chosen for a specialized route, but emphasized that anyone who takes a specialized route has proven he or she is physically capable through an annual exam and other checkpoints. He also said that, while there can be tight scheduling between runs, he wasn’t aware that scheduling was any tighter for special education runs, adding that transportation staff work with drivers to guarantee there aren’t any issues.

Ordway staff were devastated by what happened, Bang-Knudsen said, and had done their best to respond appropriately.

Because of concerns for student privacy, however, he noted that he — and staff at the scene — could not speak in-depth about the situation.

Going forward, he said that the district would be working to reinforce and reiterate safety protocols.

“Whenever a student is injured under district supervision, there’s just a great deal of sadness and a great deal of concern,” Bang-Knudsen said. “Whenever there’s an accident, we want to reflect on the cause and do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”