MSAD 72 residents sound off on school board

FRYEBURG, Maine — The MSAD 72 school board convened an emergency meeting Monday night as parents demanded answers after a special-needs elementary student went missing for several hours last week while being transported by a substitute driver to an out-of-district school.

Monday's meeting drew about two dozen area residents. 

During the meeting’s public comment period, the child’s foster mother, Kate Joy, delivered an emotional, detailed account of the Dec. 3 incident that she said exposed “systemic failures” in the district’s oversight of contracted transportation services.

The service, Alt Student, was supposed to bring the girl to a special needs school in Monmouth, which is west of Augusta.

Joy told the board her daughter was picked up by a substitute driver after the regular driver canceled because of weather conditions.

She said the substitute driver arrived late, spoke no English and struggled with his phone and GPS. Nearly five hours later, neither the district nor the company could account for the child’s whereabouts, she said.

“At 11:08 a.m., after realizing that neither the district nor the vendor could account for my child’s location, I called 911,” Joy told the board.

“I want to emphasize, a parent had to inform and initiate an emergency response to a child under district care," she added.

Police then began a missing-child search. Joy's voice broke with emotion as she recalled giving the sheriff's office her daughter's description. 

 "She was wearing a purple dress with unicorns and matching tights," said Joy. "She had a baby doll named Delilah that she took everywhere."

Joy said around noon another First Student driver located the van and her daughter in Lewiston — far off the intended route. Joy said she later learned the driver’s listed address was associated with a refugee services organization in Lewiston, and the driver may have gone there seeking help after losing GPS and cellphone connectivity.

The girl got to school at 12:40 p.m., Joy said, and was “distressed, hungry … and nonverbal,” though she is not typically nonverbal. Because the child had been missing for more than five hours, Joy said she underwent a medical evaluation at MaineHealth Stephens Hospital in Norway, Maine, and was referred for a forensic interview at Spurwink Services. 

MSAD 72 Superintendent Jay Robinson told the Sun last week that the district has stopped using First Student for student transport. He called the situation “terrible” and said the district contacted police when it became clear the girl had not reached her school.

Joy told the board that despite the district’s assurances, she was dismayed to learn transportation services with First Student continued the day after the incident. She said she urged the district to suspend the vendor, commission an independent critical-incident review, require GPS tracking for contracted vehicles and adopt stricter communication protocols when students do not arrive as expected.

She also called for "publicly released findings and corrective action to rebuild the community trust around this event."

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“These failures are not administrative oversights,” Joy said, calling them governance issues that “put student safety and public trust at risk.”

Other community members echoed frustrations about the district’s communication practices. Denmark's Trish Burnell criticized what she described as a lack of responsiveness from district officials and urged the board to broadcast meetings to increase transparency.

“What are you afraid of people knowing?” said Burnell, who also criticized the  the board's policy of not answering the public's questions.

"We come up here, we ask you questions. Time and time again, you guys stare at me like zombies. I never get an answer. There is no state mandate that says you guys cannot speak to us when we come up here and ask a question. It's your own personal policy."

The meeting also drew questions from the Sun about what steps the board will take next. Channel 8 News and Maine Wire also attended. 

Board Chair Beth Bosworth said the board will update the community once it completes its internal discussions.

"My plan is to actually to at least do an email to the parents, and then figure out how to disseminate that," said Bosworth.

Alt Student apparently did not have a representative at the meeting. In a statement to the Sun last week, Alt Student said drivers are fully vetted. 

Following the 15-minute public comment period, the board entered executive session to discuss confidential matters related to the incident. No further statements were made before the meeting adjourned.

MSAD 72 serves the Maine towns of Fryeburg, Denmark, Sweden, Lovell, Stoneham and Stow, as well as Chatham.

After the meeting, parent Steven Walsh, who said his child will attend Molly Ockett, told the Sun the timing of the meetings is unfair to working parents. 

"I'm actually pretty disturbed the fact that they had a meeting at 5 p.m.," said Walsh. "I got here at about 5:10 p.m. and it was already wrapped up, as far as the public is concerned, and now it's a closed meeting."

Walsh said he spoke to Joy after the public portion of the meeting and said he would not have been able to stay as calm as she was had this happened to his child. 

Also attending was former State Rep. Caleb Ness (R-Fryeburg), who told the Sun after the public comment portion that "I was disappointed that the public forum was so short and that they weren't allowing people to have comments afterward."