Monterey Peninsula Unified School District has announced that it will honor 15-year-old Amanda Rouse, the girl who took action and stopped the school bus she was riding on when the driver fell from her seat. (Read the original story)
School officials said today that they would honor Rouse, but did not say if they would drop the punishment against her.
“Due to student privacy rights under State and Federal law, the district is unable to disclose all of the information in its possession regarding this incident,” a written statement said.
Rouse is scheduled to appear on “Good Morning America,” and a Fox Network morning show on Tuesday morning.
Read the full text of the school district’s release here - (PDF).
While we’re very glad to hear that the district will be formally honoring her actions, it is unfortunate that they still have not lifted the punishment for “skipping school” that was originally levied against her. One step at a time, it seems.
Contact information for the Marina School district is here. Let them know if you think the punishment should be lifted.
4 comments ↓
[…] Update on School Bus Incident: District Will Honor Girl; Punishment Not Yet Dropped → […]
See what happens when public school uses logic rather than reason to deal with a heroine whose only mistake was not to call in sick, due to their school policy about cellphones?
And people wonder why our children do do anything positive. Look at what they have to look forward to. What are we teaching our children. You will get a less punishment for doing something horrible like cheating, smoking or fighting than you will for being sick and saving lives. Punishments should fit the crime. maybe instead of schools just having one punishment for everyone they should actually take the time to talk to the child and see what the best course of action would be. Wouldn’t it saves more lives in more ways than one? Most of these kids who do bad stuff could have been stopped before tragities happened if someone had just stopped and talked to them to find out what is going on. Children should be able to talk to someone with out the fear of repremand. Maybe we as parents and educators should give our children the ability to be honest without feeling ashamed then we would actually know what is going on with our children.
News of this has just reached Britain, (Sky News). I am so furious with the idiots who have treated this young lady in this way that I have emailed Mr Livermore, thanks to the email address on this site. I have also sent the same email to the ‘Superintendent’ and her deputy, (addresses from the school’s website).
My email read:
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Thanks to a number of routes, principally ‘Sky News’, the story of the admirable action taken by one of your students, Amanda Rouse, in dealing with the recent school bus incident has crossed the Atlantic Ocean to Britain.
Regrettably, so too has news of the way your school chose to ‘reward’ her with a detention.
I am utterly disgusted by the way you have treated this young lady. Whether she ’should’, (according to your judgement), have been on that bus in the first place is completely overshadowed by the fact that she coped admirably, with what must have been a pretty frightening incident for all involved at the time.
Your attempt to play-down the positive aspects of her actions by publishing a mean, dismissive and officious ‘press release’ is some thing of which you should by utterly ashamed.
Instead of taking this mean-minded approach to Ms Rouse, you should be publicly thanking her for her actions and instead concentrate your energy into dealing with the crass stupidity of the bus driver who was either too stupid or too lazy to don her seat belt, a simple action which would have prevented the situation from occurring in the first place.
Ms Rouse deserves a grovelling public apology from you, but I doubt you will have the decency to admit your error of judgement.
Lee Marchant
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