First day glitches

With all the fun and excitement that comes with the first day of school, there are bound to be problems that arise.

Students walk into the wrong class. Buses run late.

Tuesday marked the first day for nearly 40,000 Stockton Unified students to return to school, and you can believe with all those kids, mistakes were bound to be made, by accident of course.

Case #1: a concerned parent named Jennifer called to say her severely autistic daughter who attends Hazelton Elementary was picked up by the wrong special education bus on Tuesday and was dropped off at San Joaquin Elementary.

SUSD spokeswoman Dianne Barth was fully aware of the situation and said the incident was a simple mistake.

“She was brought back to Hazelton within 20 minutes,” she said. Vendetta Brown, principal at San Joaquin Elementary was there to meet with the special education bus and quickly noticed the student was not one of hers, said Barth.

Barth said she sent a picture to the special education department and the student was recognized, put back on the bus and was brought back to Hazelton to be reunited with family. Both campuses are within 1.5 miles of each other.

Jennifer told me she just simply wanted the district and public to be aware about autism, let’s all be thankful this wasn’t any worse.

Case #2: A woman by the name of Vicky left a message late Wednesday afternoon that over 100 students at Hamilton Elementary did not receive a lunch that day.

She said she had called the district and they reported only 40 students were left without a meal, which doesn’t make the situation any better.

Did hundreds of kids go hungry? How could this have happened?

“During the first day of school, Hamilton’s food services had miscounted the number of seventh-graders,” Barth said. “They were short by 60 meatballs sandwiches but the kids were given corndogs instead. All were fed.”

Mishaps are going to happen. Barth described it best, “First day glitches.”