A longtime Wareham Public Schools bus driver was fired on Wednesday, September 21 after she apparently left a kindergartner on a school bus for hours, school officials said.

The child, who was unharmed in the incident, had fallen asleep after he was picked up for the morning session of kindergarten at Hammond Elementary School in Onset on Tuesday, Superintendent Dr. Barry Rabinovitch said.

The bus driver evidently did not discover the sleeping child before she herself got off the bus, when she parked the bus at her home, or after she returned to the vehicle to pick up the morning kindergarten students from school, Rabinovitch said.

The school district only found out about the incident after the child, who exited the vehicle at the regular time with the rest of the children, told his mother that he had fallen asleep on the bus, Rabinovitch said. His mother then notified the school.

The district's transportation coordinator and the school's principal investigated the incident, an "administrative hearing" was held, and the employee was terminated, said Rabinovitch, who declined to identify the bus driver or the student involved.

"It is an unforgivable mistake and that's why we've taken action," the superintendent said. “The bottom line is that we are very specific in our training. Every time we do a training for our drivers, the 'number one' item is to do a 'student check' after you drop off at a school."

After the last child has left the bus following a drop-off, a driver is required to walk to the back of the bus and make sure no one remains on the vehicle, Rabinovitch explained. A sign indicating the bus is empty is then supposed to be displayed on the rear door.

“Our belief is that our employee did not do [the check], therefore she did not find the sleeping child,” said Rabinovitch. "We cannot tolerate that, and that's why the employee has been terminated."

As a result of the incident, principals will now be required to create a system for calling a child's home when the child is absent from school, Rabinovitch said.

He noted that such a system might not have helped in this week's situation because a parent had called the day before to say the child would be absent. Obviously, he continued, something changed in the child's situation and he was able to come to school -- but the teacher didn't know that.

"To the parent of the student involved, we are extremely sorry this occurred and we have taken the appropriate actions to try to prevent this from occurring again," Rabinovitch wrote in a press release, which he read aloud at the School Committee's meeting on September 21.

Bus drivers are required to complete a certain number of hours of training per year. The next training session will occur next week.

In addition to the regularly scheduled training, the drivers “are going to hear that if you make a mistake like this, it's going to cost you your job,” Rabinovitch said. “Each position somebody has in an organization is important. Bus drivers ... have to transport children safely from 'point a' to 'point b.' ... We pray that this does not happen again.”