Bus Accident Update

Dear Maple Valley Families and Staff,

We wanted to follow up with everyone and provide updates and further information now that the safety of all parties has been resolved. If you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out to the Bus Garage or the Central Office.

• With permission of the family, I am happy to report the one student taken for evaluation to the hospital tested negative for any serious injury and will be completely well. This is great news and the most important thing.
• Our bus received minimal damage, a bumper and grille have been ordered and will be installed in short order. The bus is structurally sound.
• Our driver was completely exonerated of any fault for the accident.
• A brief miscommunication caused the buses that were not involved with the accident to hold in case they needed to provide transport support or other support. Once the plans were in place, the buses were on their way for their unaffected trips home. We regret this caused some families to have concern when their children arrived later than usual.  We are putting better communication plans in place so this will not happen again. 
• In the future if students are impacted with a delay, we will work to inform all families.  Given the time of day and focus on the welfare of the folks directly involved in the accident, we were not able to inform all of potential delays and we regret that lapse in notice. 

Given the very positive outcomes of what could have been much worse, we are glad to learn from this and continue to revise and improve our response protocols and ability to notify our families.  To that end, this is a good time to remind families to check their notification preferences in Power School.  Please indicate the ways you would like to be informed (phone call, text or email) and be sure all of your family contact information is updated.  It also helps to clear your voice mail boxes so a message can be left for you if you do not answer the notification phone calls. We are cleaning up redundant contacts and duplications in our notification systems in an effort to eliminate multiple notifications to our families.  It is a great help when you periodically review your contact information as well. 

I want to thank our parents who responded to the scene of the accident to pick up their children. Your cooperation and patience with the health review process was so greatly appreciated in what we know was a difficult time. You did a great job parents!

As usual, working together in the best interest of our kids is why I love the Valley so much. Speaking on behalf of our transportation staff, we are grateful for your support and understanding.  The safety of our children is the most important thing and we strive to keep that promise to you.

Most sincerely,

Dr. Katherine Bertolini

Superintendent