One of the dangers that comes with Summer is the heat. When heat combines with high levels of humidity, this can create a life threatening situation. The dangers are higher for children who have certain kinds of special needs. If your child is attending a special needs Summer camp, or an extended Summer school program, make sure the bus he or she rides in has functional air conditioning.
If you have never had the misfortune to be stuck on a school bus that is not equipped with air conditioning on a hot, sticky, Summer day, consider yourself to be lucky. I have experienced this uniquely uncomfortable situation many times while accompanying groups of students who were attending a Summer program on field trips in the middle of some incredibly hot Summers in humid Illinois. I can assure you that was unpleasant for me, an adult, with no special needs (other than severe allergies).
Children who have certain kinds of special needs can be especially sensitive to hot weather. Some kids are not verbal, and therefore are unable to tell the bus driver when he or she is too hot. There was a situation in New York this Summer where special needs children were coming off the school bus after attending an extended school program drenched in sweat. Naturally, parents complained.
Now, another situation has occurred where busses lacking air conditioning have caused danger, and drama, for the special needs children who had to ride that bus. An eleven year old girl in Staten Island, New York, was attending a religious Summer Day Camp that was designed for children who have special needs. The girl has cerebral palsy, is in a wheelchair, and doesn’t have the capacity to control her body temperature. Therefore, her special needs require the camp to have an air conditioned bus that will take her to and from the Day Camp.
The girl’s mother observed that her daughter was coming home from camp sick every day. The mother complained to someone at the Day Camp about the lack of air conditioning on the bus, and I assume mentioned how dangerous this was for her daughter, due to her inability to control her body temperature. Things quickly became problematic.
The bus company insisted that the air conditioning was functioning. The girl’s mother nearly got in legal trouble for boarding the bus against the driver’s orders so that she could check the temperature inside the bus for herself. The camp and the mother had a miscommunication about whether or not the daughter would still be allowed to attend the camp. Worst of all, the daughter heard staff and the bus driver saying some things about her mother that were not very nice, and she ended up severely sick every time she rode the bus home.
This is a sad situation that could have been completely avoided. All that had to be done was for the camp, and the bus company, to make sure that the air conditioning on the bus was functional, and that the driver was, in fact, turning it on.
Image by Brian Gurrola on Flickr