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YOU ASK. WE INVESTIGATE. Mom says young son was dropped off by bus too early

Posted at 5:49 PM, Sep 15, 2016
and last updated 2016-09-15 21:57:05-04

A local mom says she found her 6-year-old all alone after school at the bus stop and she is worried about his safety.

Harrison loves school and wants to be a geologist, so his mom Kathi Espinal sent him to a magnet school. The bus picks him up and drops him off at a different school and takes him to his magnet school. 
 
Espinal said she was told he would be picked up at 4:30 every day. 
 
She said one day she noticed her son waiting at the school, before 4:30, all alone.
 
"I was not aware that she could come early, leave him there, and go," said Espinal, of the bus driver leaving her son.
 
Harrison is in the first grade and Espinal said the Clark County School District told her its policy says school authorities only have to wait with children in kindergarten. 
 
After that, there is apparently no rule in place to make sure kids are handed over from one adult to another.
 
"I'm very upset about it," Espinal said. "Anyone could just come up and snatch him and I'd never see him again."
 
13 Action News reached out to the Clark County School District and got the following statement:
 
"The ultimate responsibility of safe student passage to and from school/pickup points rests with the parent or legal guardian.
 
"The district's bus drivers transport approximately 125,000 general education students and 14,000 special education students on 1,591 bus routes daily. We continue to ask for parents' support by showing up 10 minutes prior to their child's drop off time.
 
"The district has attempted to contact the parent and will keep doing so until the issue has been resolved."
 
Espinal thinks the district still should require permission to leave young students out on their own.