Parents in Illinois are furious after a bus driver for the Monmouth-Roseville School District was seen driving through some deep floodwaters with children on board the bus.
Video shot by Trista Ross Wednesday morning outside her home in Monmouth showed the bus pushing through a flooded intersection.
"I was like, 'Oh my god, it's going! It's going through!" Ross told WQAD.
Ross says she had been taking video of the flooded streets outside her home when she saw the bus coming down 11th street.
"All the other cars and semis were turning around," she says. "The school bus driver was going through it. I just couldn't believe it."
Rain storms in the area have left the state soaked with multiple flood warnings. When the bus went through the intersection on Wednesday morning, the water was high enough to touch the bottom of a stop sign. Ross said several cars had tried to get through the flooded intersection and one car even stalled out later that afternoon.
The video was eventually sent to the school district and Superintendent Edward Fletcher wrote a letter to parents making them aware that appropriate action had been taken against the bus driver.
"Upon review the Superintendent and Director of Transportation investigated the situation. It was determined that the incident is not acceptable behavior for any bus driver and I can assure you the situation is being dealt with per our school district policy." Fletcher wrote.
Fortunately, despite the deep floodwaters, no water entered the bus and no students were injured.
"There is no logical excuse for this type of action," said Fletcher. "All drivers of vehicles know the dangers of driving through standing or running water. We would have expected the driver would have applied that knowledge and followed their training."
"We here at Monmouth-Roseville take our student safety very serious and we will use this occasion to reinforce our expectation of student safety to all of our bus drivers before our students return to school in August," the superintendent added.