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nearly every day, kathleen hotard walks down her driveway to meet her son as he gets off the bus. though he's only five years old, kenneth has been taking the bus home from school for almost two years. 




so when hotard didn't see her son at the bus stop after school, she was afraid. when she learned why he wasn't there, that fear quickly turned to anger. image credit: screenshot/wwl-tv 




as wwl-tv news reports, hotard had gone to the bus stop on monday and waited for her son to appear. when he didn't, the worried mother immediately thought about the terrible things that could have happened. she tells wwl-tv: 




<u+201c>the driver opened the doors and my child was not on the bus. the driver informed me he was not there and that she didn't know where he was but that he had not gotten on the bus that day. you get this pit in your stomach because you don't know where your child is. you don't know if they're okay or if they're crying for you.<u+201d> 




learning why her son hadn't gotten on the bus didn't make things better. upset that the other children were throwing spitballs that sometimes hit him, kenneth had told his teacher he had a note from his mother giving him permission to walk home from school. 




unfortunately, there was no note, but the school failed to confirm that fact with hotard. she tells wwl-tv: 




<u+201c>i was informed my child had lied and said he had a parental note to walk home. i confirmed i never wrote a note, and they confirmed they never saw a note. he said he had misplaced it.<u+201d> 




after learning that a substitute teacher had taken kenneth at his word with no follow-up, hotard is now demanding action from the school. though she says that she is angry with her son for lying, she also wonders why the school didn't check with her before allowing her son to walk home alone. 




as for kenneth, a call to the police from a concerned citizen helped find him. he was found about a half mile from school, heading in the wrong direction down a busy road. he admitted that he got <u+201c>kind of<u+201d> lost trying to get home. 




the school superintendent has apologized and promised to investigate what went wrong. hotard hopes that this will be followed by safeguards that will prevent the same thing from happening again. she tells wwl-tv: 




<u+201c>i don<u+2019>t want any other parent to ever have to feel what i felt. i don<u+2019>t want any other child to be on a side of a road by themselves scared.<u+201d>
the 'pit' in mom's stomach turns to anger when she learns why her son isn't on the school bus
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