2 DeKalb kindergartners went missing on 1st day of school; their parents want accountability

DeKALB – Shannon Stoker doesn’t know what emotional state she would be in if she had lost her 6-year-old son, Stevie, on his first day of elementary school.

It was Aug. 18, the night before kindergarten and pre-K classes started at Founders Elementary School when the DeKalb mom decided to drop an AirTag in her child’s backpack as a precaution. Apple AirTags are devices that can be carried and used via Bluetooth to track a person’s whereabouts.

What Shannon Stoker didn’t know then, she said, was how close her son, who has autism, came to going missing.

“He could have been anywhere,” Shannon Stoker said. “It was definitely running through my head that when the little bus came to pick him up in the morning that I put him on – ‘Was that even a real bus? Did I ship him off with some predator?’ I kept staring at the AirTag and being like, ‘If I had not had that AirTag, this would have been so much worse.’”

Stevie’s first day of kindergarten turned out to be a nightmare, his parents said, after school officials could not tell the Stokers which bus he had been on, why he’d been marked absent all day or where he was by the afternoon.

Steven Ermilio of DeKalb said school officials also lost track of his 5-year-old son, Joah, also starting kindergarten Aug. 19 at Founders Elementary. When he and his wife went to pick Joah up from his bus stop by their home at the end of the day, he wasn’t there.

Both parents aired their grievances at the DeKalb school board meeting Aug. 20, alleging misconduct.

Each parent also recounted their ordeals in detail in exclusive interviews with Shaw Local News Network. They said they’re sharing their stories because they want to call for accountability in DeKalb Schohol District 428′s bus-to-school procedures that they said failed their young children.

It is insanity. How could they not care about any of this? We had just met his teacher on Friday. ... The school marked him absent and nobody called me all day long.”

—  Shannon Stoker, DeKalb District 428 parent

Parents recount ordeals

Stevie’s mom put him on the school bus that morning, Aug. 19.

Stevie’s after-school schedule included a plan to have a school bus take him from Founders, 821 S. Seventh St., to Westside Children’s Center, 2568 Sycamore Road. By the afternoon, she called a district employee to ask whether she needed to pick her son up from Westside or if the bus would take him home.

At 3:58 p.m., she said a Founders employee called her to say Stevie hadn’t been in school all day.

Shannon Stoker panicked. She said she’d been tracking her son’s whereabouts using the AirTag randomly throughout the day. She said it always showed her son at Founders.

The district said it has an automated system that notifies parents by 10 a.m. if a student is reported absent. On that day, it did not function properly, a district representative said.

Shannon Stoker said she called 911, seeking DeKalb police assistance finding Stevie because her AirTag had lost him only to later regain tracking ability. Stevie’s dad, Andy Stoker, said he found his son by tracing his location and following the school bus to a stop near Burger King off of West Lincoln Highway.

He recounted the difficulty he faced when he approached the bus driver to claim his son from the route. He alleged the bus driver and district employees did not know his son was on their bus.

“There are two [police] officers there already with a drone looking for him,” Andy Stoker said. “The bus driver said no. I was on with dispatch like ‘There’s no child with that name on this bus.’ ... I’m looking at my son and I go, ‘He’s right there. That is my child.’ And she just lost it. Like they said adamantly, three different people said that this was not Steven Stoker. This is some other child, and he was getting dropped off somewhere else.”

Prior to the school year’s start, Shannon Stoker said she struggled to know which bus route her son was assigned, which made the task of helping Stevie all the more challenging as a parent.

She said she believes the school district is refusing to take responsibility.

“It is insanity. How could they not care about any of this?” Shannon Stoker said. “We had just met his teacher on Friday and [Individualized Education Program] coordinator that Friday. ... The school marked him absent and nobody called me all day long.”

Shannon Stoker said she is “terrified” about busing her son to school. Stevie has been pulled out of Founders. The Stokers said the district is working with them to transfer their son to Jefferson Elementary School.

Shannon Stoker said it’s difficult to gauge how Stevie is grappling with how his first day of school went.

“He’s got a pretty large communication delay,” she said. “His communication skills aren’t really all that great. In his eyes, he spent a day in his classroom. He didn’t know his teacher’s name. He told us he played with dinosaurs. He speaks mainly in the third person.”

The afternoon of Aug. 19, after Joah’s first day of kindergarten at Founders Elementary School, Steven Ermilio and his wife gathered in their neighborhood where they expected their son to be dropped off from the bus.

Ermilio said he was instructed by the district’s Skyward app to be at the bus door in his neighborhood on time for student pickup because bus drivers are not allowed to let anyone off otherwise.

He said they noticed that Joah wasn’t on the bus. His wife asked the driver where Joah was.

“As soon as she told me he wasn’t there, I started running about six blocks to go see if I can find him,” Ermilio said. “I was lucky I was able to find him. ... My wife was asking her questions while I was running to go find our son. I found my son. Apparently, he was crying because he thought we forgot about him. A kid saw him crying at the corner and that kid went and grabbed his mom, stayed with him, tried to find his mom and dad. That’s when I came up and found him.”

Ermilio said his son had gone missing for about 10 minutes.

He said what makes things worse is that Joah and his family are new to town.

“He just started, and we just moved to DeKalb, too, so he doesn’t know the area at all,” Ermilio said.

Ermilio said he had called the DeKalb Police Department to inquire about what they could do to help remedy the situation. He said he was told that he could file a police report for neglect against the bus driver.

Joah has since returned to being bused to school.

“We made friends with the moms on the corner and the kids,” Ermilo said. “They’re going to be bus buddies to keep an eye on each other so he’s going to try today to take the bus home, but he was kind of iffy about the bus. But that’s what he wanted to do. He asked if he could try.”

Ermilio said he fears his son may be traumatized after what he went through the first day of school.

“My son is going to see a therapist because he may be having issues now due to what happened,” he said. “He’s been acting up at home, the doctors and school. He’s never acted like this before Monday.”

School board members issue apology for ‘failures at almost every level’

At Tuesday’s DeKalb School District 428 board meeting, some board members addressed the parents’ concerns directly. Both parents also spoke at the meeting.

Board Vice President Christopher Boyes said he takes what occurred to the two families seriously.

“What happened yesterday was unacceptable,” Boyes said. “We as a board, we as a cabinet, we as building administrators, the bus service that we contract with – there were failures at almost every level with what happened in those situations. I genuinely want to say as a board member, I am sorry for what happened. I can promise you that all hands have been on deck to put in every measure that we possibly can to make sure that a situation like this never happens again.”

Board President Deyci Ramirez said the board wants to do right by the two families.

“Normally during public participation, we do not interact with the public,” Ramirez said. “I do not want to come off as insensitive to what was shared today. We obviously do care about the situation that happened. We are grateful that the children are OK and that everyone is doing their due diligence to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”

What happened yesterday was unacceptable. We as a board, we as a cabinet, we as building administrators, the bus service that we contract with – there were failures at almost every level with what happened in those situations. I genuinely want to say as a board member, I am sorry for what happened.”

—  Christopher Boyes, District 428 School Board vice president

In a prepared statement read during Tuesday’s school board meeting, Superintendent Minerva Garcia-Sanchez apologized to the two families whose children went missing.

“We are deeply sorry for the concern this caused the family and we are conducting a full investigation of the events of the day,” Garcia-Sanchez said in a statement. “Ensuring that each and every child is safe on their routes to and from school, along with their day at school is our critical priority, and we will continue to evaluate and make adjustments to our procedures to that end.”

The district declined to provide further comment.

In a statement, representatives for the district’s school bus provider, First Student, which transported both students, said it is doing its part to address the matter.

“At First Student, there is nothing more important than the safety and well-being of the students in our care,” statement reads. “We understand why the families are upset and concerned. Both incidents were reviewed and addressed with the drivers. We are committed to ensuring neither situation happens again.”

Shannon Stoker expressed appreciation for the sentiments shared by some board members and the superintendent, but criticized the board president for her remarks.

“I was grateful for the board members that cared,” she said. “I don’t really know what to say about the superintendent’s comment. I was happy she said something. They lost my child, and they were so flippant about it. I’m still just really processing that. I did notice that at the end, the [board] president made those comments about how just because they don’t react doesn’t mean they don’t care. I thought when I was speaking, she made it clear she did not care. So, I found that a little ironic.”

Ermilio said the district’s top executive needs to take this matter seriously.

“The superintendent needs to resign or get fired,” Ermilio said. “She is unable to do her job properly. She does not care.”