LITTLE ROCK — A North Little Rock YMCA employee on Tuesday drove 17 elementary school students a mile down one of the city’s busiest streets in a pickup - some sitting and standing in the truck’s open bed - sparking an Arkansas Department of Human Services investigation.
When people at the YMCA saw the employee pull up to the Johnny & Sharon Heflin Family Branch of the YMCA at 6101 John F. Kennedy Blvd. with the children in the truck, the employee was fired on the spot, said Susan Cohen, the branch’s membership and marketing director.
“I wish I could tell you what she was thinking,” Cohen said. “But she didn’t tell me.”
Cohen said the employee worked for the YMCA since Sept. 22, was 18 years old and female. She declined to provide the woman’s name.
“The termination was not up for discussion,” Cohen said. “This was not, ‘We’re going to write you up.’ It was not, ‘We’re going to let you quit.’”
Emily Spurrier’s 6-year old daughter, Kathryn, was one of the students the YMCA employee picked up after classes let out at Indian Hills Elementary School, a mile north of the Heflin branch at 6800 Indian Hills Drive.
“The YMCA first only told me there was a ‘quote unquote’ incident,” she said.
Spurrier, 35, said the truck had a double cab and some students - her daughter included - sat inside.
“I asked her whether she was wearing a seat belt and she said, ‘Oh, no, Mommy, there wasn’t room. I was sitting on somebody’s lap.’”
Spurrier was only partially relieved to learn it was another child’s lap.
Kathryn’s grandmother, Pat Holloway, said she could not fathom what would go through someone’s brain to pack 17 children into a pickup.
“She’s 18, so she doesn’t have a brain yet, but still,” Holloway said.
North Little Rock police spokesman Sgt. Terry Kuykendall said two laws could be read to apply to the employee’s conduct. The first is a traffic offense, Arkansas Code Annotated 27-35-104, titled riding in spaces not for passengers. The second is a Class D felony, Arkansas Code Annotated 5-27-205, endangering the welfare of a minor.
“The Police Department most likely wouldn’t make a decision on something like that without an officer witnessing what happened,” Kuykendall said. “We’d build a case file the prosecutors could review and let them make that determination.”
But he said North Little Rock police had not been notified the incident occurred and were not investigating.
Cohen said she was unaware of any similar occurrences in the past. She said admonitions against driving children in anything but the center’s 25-passenger bus were part ofthe employee’s training and orientation.
“Who would have thought you would ever have to say to never put a child in the back of your pickup?” Cohen said. “I mean, hello. I never had to tell my children never to put their heads in the oven and close the door. Maybe I should.”
Cohen said the employee was supposed to go to Indian Hills to gather the children in the cafeteria and check their names against the roster before leading them out to the bus.
“She’s 18,” Cohen said. “We’d never let her even drive the bus.”
Department of Human Services spokesman Julie Munsell confirmed that the agency’s division of child care, which licenses the YMCA, opened an investigation. But she offered no further information.
North Little Rock School District Superintendent Ken Kirspel said there was little if anything the school could have done differently.
“No - no, the easy answer is no,” he said.
School had been out long enough that no one working there would have stayed to watch, he said. Administrators called the YMCA to find out more after a parent mentioned seeing a truckload of students on JFK Boulevard, he said.
“The only thing I think we probably will do is talk to the Y and see if the Y can’t pick the kids up more promptly,” Kirspel said.
He added he would also ask school administrators to make sure the principal or assistant principal know when students stay late and to watch them personally.
Spurrier said she was at the school for parent-teacher conferences late on Tuesday and heard nothing about the crowded ride.
“Nobody said anything,” she said.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 09/30/2010