Oooh, what's your new job?
I'm not absolutely positive I have it yet, but Human Resources called and indicated that I will get it, telling me that I need to bring my Social Security card, my driver's license, and a voided check for direct deposit after I officially get and accept the offer. It is the same job I have been doing as a volunteer for over a year, which is riding a bus with my daughter and some other autistic children to two autism schools about a ninety minute ride from where we live. I started riding with just my daughter and a driver, but then the school district added another child to the bus so of course I looked after her as well. Now the school district plans to add one or two more kids to the bus and they decided they needed to hire someone to watch over the children instead of just having me volunteer, so I applied for the job.
I started riding the bus with her when she started attending the autism school because the transportation department wanted to transport her only if they were allowed to attach her to her seat with a harness. My husband and I argued that would have been inappropriate for her because she would fight being restrained like this, she would do everything she could to figure out how to remove the harness, and she would act out in ways they never considered because of being upset over the restraint. She would wear a seat belt without any problem, because she was used to wearing that, but not a harness. Also, at this time, she had never in her life taken off her seat belt in a moving vehicle, so harnessing her into her seat was not logically justified. I told them that I would ride the bus with her rather than have her restrained like this. They sent me a certified letter saying that they would transport her without the harness if I was available to ride with her both ways every day, but the certified letter also threatened to call the police if she acted up and would not cooperate with having the harness put on her, or if I would not do it.
It's kind of ironic, in a way. I was called into a meeting with the Transportation department and the Student Services department because, shortly after I broke my finger, my daughter took off her seat belt and pulled the driver's hair and also took off the seat belt again after I put a safety clip on it that is supposed to keep children from removing their seat belts and pulled the other little girl's hair. I was expecting them to insist again that she wear the harness, or else they wouldn't transport her. In the meeting, I told them that my daughter never took off her seat belt until she saw the other little girl on the bus take hers off first and they seemed shocked. I don't know why that was so shocking to them. The driver had requested a safety clip to prevent this little girl from taking off her seat belt because she did it again one day when my daughter and I didn't ride the bus and it scared the driver badly. Why would she ask for such a thing unless it was needed and why could her boss not put this together?
Anyway, the brand new head of Student Services listened carefully to everyone and then decided they needed to hire and train a paraprofessional to ride the bus.
