South-Western City Schools says a distracted school bus driver failed to follow safety procedures, and now faces discipline.
A concerned parent brought the incident to 10TV's attention.
"Immediately I wanted to grab a snapshot because I couldn't believe what I was seeing," he said.
The parent asked 10TV not to identify him for fear of drawing attention to his children.
He shared a photo he snapped of a school bus in his neighborhood last Friday.
"No hazard lights, no flashing lights, no stop sign, children are exiting the bus, with their backpacks, clearly getting off the bus. The bus doors is open."
He says he contacted the school district, and then sent the photo to 10TV. We asked the school district what happened.
Spokesperson Sandy Nekoloff explains:
"What happened was, as the bus was slowing down, to go to a bus stop, there was a disruption in the back of the bus. This distracted the driver. The driver then stopped the bus, to deal with the distraction, and inadvertently forgot to turn on the toggle switch to turn on the flashing lights...and when you forget to flip the toggle switch that activates the yellow flashers, you also don't get the red flashers and the arm going out when you open the bus door."
"I understand these bus drivers get busy and they have a day like we do, sometimes you get busy," the father said. "But when you're talking about a lot of students on a bus, safety has to come first."
Nekoloff says the driver will be retrained, and potentially disciplined. And she thanks this parent for making the district aware.
"We always urge parents when they see something, they need to let us know. Because then we can follow up and make sure everyone is safe. Because ultimately it's the safety of our students," she said. "We take that very seriously"
South-Western Schools says the driver has been with the district for two years and has a clean record.