Johnson was a substitute bus driver for the Paulding County School District.
By Zac Summers
Published: Feb. 9, 2023 at 5:58 PM EST
ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - Three weeks after a video of a school bus incident in Paulding County went viral, the school district has fired the bus driver involved.
Crystal Johnson sat down with Atlanta News First’s Zac Summers Thursday. She said if there’s one thing she regrets about the Jan. 18 incident, it’s that she lost control of the situation.
“All I was thinking about was keeping those kids safe,” Johnson said. “But I should have dealt with it a little bit better, a little bit more calmly.”
Johnson was a substitute bus driver for the Paulding County School District. She said she typically drives high school students home. On Jan. 18, she was assigned to take students from Allgood Elementary School home. Things escalated quickly at a bus stop near the intersection of Old Harris Road and Jimmy Lee Smith Parkway in Dallas.
“I got to these couple of boys, and something had been said by a parent that just made me feel uneasy,” Johnson said.
Johnson explained she had an uncomfortable exchange with a parent who was trying to get a child off the bus. Some students had yellow tags on their backpacks, which means they could not be let off without a parent present. Johnson was hesitant to let those children off the bus without positively identifying the parents. Tensions escalated to a physical altercation between Johnson and another parent – and later children were seen on video climbing out the window of the buses.
NEW: Video from Paulding County parent with child on bus - after driver refused to let kids without yellow tags off - appears to show a woman assault the driver before she drove off. Video has been circulating online showing students climbing out windows. More at 6 @ATLNewsFirst pic.twitter.com/Moo8Wngs8D
— Zac Summers (@ZacOnTV) January 19, 2023
Video of the incident went viral on social media.
“I was stressed,” Johnson said of the ordeal. “I was so dumbfounded by the whole thing.”
This week, the Paulding County School District fired Johnson after looking at bus surveillance video from the entire route. The district determined Johnson violated several safety and operating protocols leaders deemed “egregious and jeopardized student safety...well before the altercation.”
“I think that they’re trying to save face,” Johnson said. “I think the things I did is not warranted for me to be fired.”
Johnson admitted to “lightly” brake checking at least once while students were on board and raising her voice. However, she believes if the video never went viral, she would still have a job.
“It would have mattered, but it could have been addressed in like a retraining situation like, ‘OK, we see you did this, but you need to do this,’” she said.
When asked if she could’ve done things differently, Johnson said, “I probably should have just stayed at the school. Maybe had an administrator ride with me or call for someone to ride the bus with me since they were being so unruly.”
Johnson and the parent who slapped her were both charged with simple battery. Johnson said her priority now is getting the charge dismissed and moving on with her life.
“I loved my job,” she said. “I’m sorry that the kids felt like they were in danger because they weren’t. On the bus, they were safe, and I was trying to get them back to somewhere safe.”
Atlanta News First’s requests for the bus video from the district and the Dallas Police Department were denied. We also reached out to the parent charged but did not receive a response.
Full statement from the district:
The Paulding County School District (PCSD) is committed to providing a safe environment for our students and staff. Our bus drivers do an extraordinary job as evidenced by the more than 5 million interactions they have with students and their families every school year. For thousands of our students, a school bus driver is the first and last personal interaction of the school day, and the school district and our drivers take that responsibility seriously. PCSD and the families we serve have great appreciation for our school bus drivers and the challenging and sometimes thankless jobs they do safely transporting approximately 16,000 of our students to and from school every day.
On January 18th, an incident occurred at a school bus stop at the intersection of Old Harris Road and Jimmy Lee Smith Parkway. The incident received much attention on both social and traditional media networks, and, unfortunately, was not reflective of the typical safe and positive interactions between bus drivers and parents that occur hundreds of times every day at bus stops across Paulding County. PCSD has thoroughly and fairly investigated the situation.
As part of its personnel investigation, the school district interviewed multiple individuals involved in the incident and has reviewed extensive video footage that includes the entire bus route. The school district’s investigation has found that the overall behavior of the students that afternoon was characteristic of an elementary bus route, until the students became increasingly frightened and upset as the situation evolved. The investigation also determined that as the bus left Allgood Elementary School, and well before the physical altercation occurred at the bus stop, there were numerous violations of safety and operating protocols. Several of these violations were egregious and jeopardized student safety.
Our bus drivers undergo comprehensive training on our protocols. Training and manuals cover protocols requiring drivers to prioritize student safety, demonstrate professionalism, and manage student behavior with sound judgment. As dedicated professionals, our bus drivers have an expectation to never jeopardize student safety or treat students in an abusive manner. As a school district, we hold ourselves to a much higher standard.
In this instance, these well-established protocols for the release of students from the school bus were not followed. This, in addition to a general lack of communication, allowed the situation to quickly escalate and become a serious safety concern. Our bus drivers model excellence daily, but in this isolated case, protocols and expectations were not followed.
The school district wants to be very clear that it also does not condone the actions of the individuals who became involved in the physical altercation. The altercation that occurred at the bus stop was separately and independently investigated by the Dallas Police Department, and on January 30, 2023, Dallas PD charged both the bus driver and the parent/guardian with misdemeanor simple battery.
The school district has recommended that the Board of Education approve terminating the driver’s employment. The school board unanimously approved that recommendation on Feb. 7, 2023.
We again want to thank our bus drivers for the outstanding jobs they do, often under difficult circ*mstances. We offer our sincerest apologies to our families and students and affirm our commitment to placing the safety of our students as the highest priority.
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