ANDERSON — Sallie Foster knew something was wrong after she answered the phone Tuesday afternoon.
“I got a phone call around 3:35 and all I could hear was bloodcurdling screams from my 9-year-old,” the Chesterfield mother said. “For seven minutes I listened to my daughter scream and scream.”
Foster said her daughter, Siara Whisnant, has autism and is mildly mentally handicapped. She attends an intensive intervention special education program with fewer than five students at Edgewood Elementary School. A classmate, Andrew Ellet, 10, lives just down the street and rides the bus to school with Siara. He, too, has autism.
On the bus ride home, Siara had what her mother and Anderson Community Schools officials call “a meltdown” as the bus was stopped to pick up students at Ebbertt Education Center at the Wigwam Complex.
It’s unclear what caused Siara to “melt down,” swinging her arms and trying to hit students on the bus. Some of those students were preschoolers.
“It never should have happened,” said Nancy Farley, ACS transportation director. She said she was unaware that preschoolers and special-needs children were sharing a bus, as was the ACS special education department, until the incident happened.
Farley said she told the bus contractor, “We’ve got to stop that right now,” even if it meant a separate route just for Siara and Andrew.
“Thank goodness we were made aware of it. It will not happen again,” she said.
The telephone call that Foster received came as an Ebbertt staff member “put (Siara) down on the ground on the school bus trying to hold her down until some help arrived,” according to a police report.
Anderson police were called when “they couldn’t control the kid and were worried that something was going to happen,” the report said.
But Foster said that as Siara was being held face-down, she sustained bruises and “became even more enraged because they were holding her down.”
Foster said she has contacted Child Protective Services, and she and Andrew’s mom, Angela Ellet, demanded a police report be filed. Andrew also was removed from the bus during the incident.
“Now it’s like she’s petrified of the school,” Foster said, adding that Siara will be homebound for the rest of the school year. She has not gone back to school since Tuesday.
“I want her to learn, and I want her to be around her own peers,” Foster said. “But in all aspects, I believe it’s better that she doesn’t return to school. I don’t want my child to be hurt ... it seems like that’s all that’s happening.”
Ellet, too, says her son isn’t getting the individualized attention that he needs in order to learn. She said that earlier Tuesday, Andrew wandered away from class only to be found a short time later by the school swings.
She said teachers frequently call her to pick up her son from school. “They don’t want to deal with it. They call every day. They call Siara’s mom every day.”
“My son’s not learning anything. If you walk in that classroom, all you see is toys. It’s like a preschool,” she said.
Andrew also stayed away from school after Tuesday. His mom said Friday that he will return for a short time on Monday. She said she will drive him.
Contact Dave Stafford: 648-4250, dave.stafford@heraldbulletin.com
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