A serious safety concern has arisen in the Houston Independent School District after Daja Spencer reported that her 4-year-old pre-K student from Bastian Elementary School was mistakenly handed over to an unauthorized individual during car rider dismissal.
The mother said that the incident occurred at the Sunnyside neighborhood school. Her daughter was placed into a stranger’s car and driven off campus before the individual returned the child to the school, she said.
“When she came to the car, she was crying and very upset,” Spencer told Fox26. “She told me, ‘Mommy, I was put in the wrong car. I didn’t see you. I didn’t see daddy. Why didn’t you come save me?’”
According to Spencer, her daughter allegedly told school personnel that the vehicle they were putting her into was the wrong one before they placed her inside.
Following the incident, Spencer reported the matter to the police and took her daughter to a hospital for examination.
“She is physically OK, but emotionally she is not,” Spencer said.
The alarming incident has prompted a police report and reignited worries about student safety protocols at the school.
Houston ISD confirmed the incident in a statement, mentioning that the student was “safely and immediately returned” to the campus afterward.
The district wrote, “During car rider dismissal on Jan. 29 at Bastian Elementary, an employee mistakenly placed a Pre-K student in the wrong car with a group of students. As the parent who was driving was leaving the campus, they realized what happened, and drove around the school to return the student.”
Spencer, however, said that she has not received an incident report from the school district and has been unable to get information regarding the identity of the person her daughter was with or the duration of her absence.
“When I go to the school, they tell me they can’t let me know anything,” she recounted.
She also disputed Houston ISD’s claim that the student stayed with staff in the front office until the parent arrived for pickup.
“My child was in a car with a stranger from about 3:12 p.m. to about 3:24 p.m.,” Spencer said. “They dropped her back off, and that’s when I arrived and learned what had happened.”
To address the incident, Houston ISD has implemented new dismissal procedures for the student, who will now be picked up directly from the school’s front office. Furthermore, the district has removed the employee involved from car rider duty and assigned additional staff to assist with pre-K dismissal.
“Houston ISD is committed to ensuring the safety of students before, during and after school,” the district said in a statement.
Despite the reassurance, Spencer plans to withdraw her daughter from Bastian Elementary.
“If my daughter didn’t tell me what happened, I wouldn’t know anything,” she said. Spencer added that her daughter told her there were other children in the vehicle and that the car went to a home before returning to the school.
She told KHOU, “I don’t know how I can ever trust HISD again… Strangers take my daughter, with no ID, no fact-checking, no anything.”
