[A] bus driver for Green Mountain Transit allegedly forced 17 students of color to get off an after-school bus in Burlington Thursday, while their white schoolmates were allowed to stay, says the mother of two of the students.
Rebecca Mack said students from Edmunds Middle School and Edmunds Elementary School were singing and clapping on the ride home Thursday afternoon, when the driver stopped the bus and made the students of color get off.
Mack was near the bus route when she saw a group of students, including her own children, on North Winooski Avenue. She said the students asked her to take video testimony about what happened, in which they explained that the driver targeted students of color, threatening to call the police if they did not leave the bus, while the white students were allowed to remain seated. All of the students who were removed from the bus were children of color, ranging in age from 5 to 13, she said.
A GMT spokesperson told Seven Days that it could not comment before conducting an internal review. Jamie Smith, director of planning and marketing, would not provide the driver’s name.
The Burlington School District contracts with GMT for before and after school bus routes that service most of the city’s neighborhoods. The bus is available to all students. Middle and elementary students who live a certain distance from their schools can ride for free while others pay a fare.
Mack wrote a post on Facebook about the incident, explaining what happened and what she heard from the students. She has shared the video with the school and bus company, but she said has not made it public, to ensure the students are not further targeted.
Mack said that Green Mountain Transit told her it is not its policy to eject children from the bus without first calling a supervisor.
She said GMT told her it has removed the driver from that route, pending its investigation, but that he’s driving other routes.
Mack said the students reported that all students of color were targeted — including those not making any noise — and that no white students were asked to leave the bus. She said from her understanding, most of the students of color were sitting in the back of the bus, while the front of the bus was mostly white students.
“Some children refused to exit the bus, because they knew their right to safe transportation,” Mack wrote. “When the driver threatened to call the police, they were scared and exited the bus. Some ran. One child lost his shoes.”
Mack said many of the students were far from their destinations, with some not knowing how to get where they were going. She was on a bicycle, and unable to help transport the students. She said some of the kids were going to the Boys and Girls Club on Riverside Avenue, while others were headed home.
The response from Edmunds, Mack said, has been very good.
“They were very, very concerned and supportive,” she said.
Over the weekend, Mack ran into one of the students involved in the incident, who told her he had to ride on a bus with that driver the very next day.
“Why is the driver not suspended?” Mack said.
Mayor Miro Weinberger said he became aware of the incident over the weekend, and that GMT had been invited to next week’s City Council meeting.
“We reached out to GMT this morning to share our concerns about what we read,” he said.
Councilors Ali Dieng and Max Tracy have also asked GMT to come to attend the June 3 council meeting to discuss what happened.
Mack said she hopes that the school district and GMT will take action to ensure children’s right to transportation in Burlington, to review the district’s contract with GMT and their rules about the supervision of children on buses, noting that the driver was the only adult on the bus in question, and to make the students of color feel safe and supported in their community.
“This will be a life-shaping experience for these kids,” Mack said. “It will affect the way they see the world and themselves in the world as people of color. I think we can do better.”
She said it’s the most explicit racism that her children have experienced.
“I have every hope and expectation for them and for the other children involved that they will not internalize that message,” Mack said. “I hope they will get enough support from the community that they will know they are valuable and smart and strong — all the things we want children to grow up knowing about themselves.”
Mack said she planned to attend a school board equity and diversity meeting Tuesday night.
