PLYMOUTH – Asher Budka will never forget the helpless, panicked feeling Wednesday when his wife called to tell him his son had disappeared from school. White Asher was in Illinois on business, his 5-year-old son Skyler went looking for an adventure.

The boy’s babysitter was supposed to pick him up after school. Instead, Skyler stepped out of the pick-up line and into the bus line.

The bus driver didn’t notice a different student on the bus, and nobody noticed Skyler get off the bus at the high school, then walk away.

“I was angry,” Asher said. “I was angry at the school system that this even happened.”

Plymouth Superintendent of schools Dan Tyree told WSBT he is not making any excuses for his teachers, aides and bus drivers who should have been watching the boy.
Tyree had not yet been made aware of the incident until a reporter called and asked him about it around 9:30 a.m. Thursday.

“It’s just one of those things that we wish didn’t happen and we thought we had plans in place to make sure it didn’t,” he later explained.

Tyree also said the kids knew they would be taking a bus to the high school Thursday afternoon to see a play.

“I think he was just a little over-excited about that,” said Tyree.

Once the Skyler’s babysitter discovered him missing, his principal at Washington Elementary gave all the corporation’s bus drivers a description of the boy over the two-way radio. A few minutes later, one of the drivers found him more than half a mile from the high school where he got off the bus, near the intersection of Michigan and Jefferson Streets downtown.

He was missing a total of about 15 minutes.

“He could have been picked up by some stranger and I would never see him again,” said Asher of the ‘what-if’s,’ “Or he could have walked down right through the Michigan Street intersection and could have been hit by a car.”

Tyree told WSBT the school corporation is very sorry for what happened.

“I know [situations like] that scare parents to death and it really scares me to death too,” he said. “We're already putting another plan in place to make sure that doesn't happen in the future.”

But Asher is still upset, and he thinks it would be a different situation if his son wandered away on his watch.

“I would be in jail for negligence. The school system is the guardians for our kids. They've gotta be held accountable too,” he said.

Tyree met with the transportation director, the assistant superintendent, the boy's teacher and also called the 5-year-old's parents to apologize Thursday.