Richland Student Kicked Off School Bus For Spraying Perfume

A student in Richland, Washington thought the school bus smelled bad, so she sprayed perfume. But apparently, dousing a bus in No.5 (or any flowery scent) is against the school district's rules -- and she was kicked off when she wouldn't hand over the bottle to the driver. The 15-year-old's parents, Clair and Carrie Doyle, were outraged.

"It's unacceptable to have the school district treat our children like this. I don't care if she was fighting. I don't care what she was doing. I wasn't notified," her dad told KNDO.

The girl was ordered off the bus and let off at the middle school two blocks away from Richland High. And though it's the disctrict's policy to contact parents if a student is asked to get off the bus, faculty didn't call them. Their explanation? Since the young girl was on the phone with her parents as it was happening, the school considered that contact.

Steve Aagard of Richland School District says that they are not planning any policy changes. If a similar incident occurs in the future, the bus driver will be sure to let the student off in a safe area, he told KNDO. But this doesn't put the Doyles' minds at ease.

"The possibility of somebody pulling up and grabbing them after school is huge," the girl's father argued.

This statement might not be accurate though; it adds to a seemingly endless debate of whether the danger faced by a child left alone is real or perceived. According to Warwick Cairns, author of "How to Live Dangerously," the possibility of someone kidnapping a child is not actually huge. He estimates that it would take 750,000 hours for that to absolutely happen if you were to leave your child on a street corner.

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Comments

[IrieMoon]

11:35 AM on 11/17/2011

Perfume makers do not have to disclose the ingredients in their perfume. Many perfumes today are made with various chemicals that normal people would not dare to expose themselves to on a daily basis. Some people are highly allergic to these chemicals and can have very dangerous reactions to them.
Nobody should be spraying perfume in an enclosed area like a bus.

[tom13615]

10:50 AM on 11/17/2011

When I drove school bus a child wasn't let off the bus until their designated spot or to the supervision of a shool official of the school they attended. If it warranted it the police would be called. But NEVER was a child left anywhere unattended or scheduled. The safety of the children came first regardless of the action.

[ao78]

11:28 AM on 11/17/2011

k

[ao78]

11:33 AM on 11/17/2011

Please. This is a teen old enough (but clearly not responsible or considerate enough) to have a driving permit. She was left at a school while her parents were listening in on her cell. I'm sure mommy or daddy was halfway there before the bus left the curb.

[tom13615]

11:48 AM on 11/17/2011

That's an assumption that holds a lot of liability for the driver, bus company, school district and personal safety of the minor. The cell offers no safety from preditors. Kids disapear in a flash everywhere. The well being and protection of a minor should be common sense not an assumption.

Thanks for your reply

[itsamadworld]

11:02 PM on 11/16/2011

It's about time people wake up to the toxins in all scented products. Literally millions of people around the world with asthma, chemical sensitivity, COPD, heart problems, etc. are negatively affected by perfumed products. I went to a City Council meeting the other evening - it is a huge room. There were very few people at the meeting. A young woman came in reeking of some hair care product. I was speaking at the City Council meeting on a very important issue so I had to stay, but her hair was so scented that by the time I left my throat was closing. If I had been on that bus I would have been in the ER.

Like SalvadorLourdes said: this industry is self-regulated. Ingredients are considered "trade secrets." I disagree however that 20% of the approximately 5,000 chemicals used in fragrances have been tested for safety and absolutely none of them have been tested together as to their synergistic effects. To make matters worse, FDA lacks the authority to require manufacturers to test cosmetics for safety, including fragranced products, before they are sold to consumers. As a result, people using perfume, cologne, body spray and other scented cosmetics like lotion and aftershave are unknowingly exposed to chemicals that may increase their risk for certain health problems - and like tobacco smoke they are placing others at risk. Fragrance is not sexy - it is poison.http://www.ewg.org/notsosexy

[ao78]

11:37 AM on 11/17/2011

Those kids still stuck in the bus after she sprayed it were worse off than her. Many people would get nauseous or a bad headache from that but those with allergies can have seizures.

[Sarah Underwood]

10:16 PM on 11/16/2011

Good! It doesn't matter if SHE thought the bus smelled bad, what if there was someone on the bus that was allergic to something in the perfume? What if another student was asthmatic and had an attack. This is just another example of the spoiled "I am going to do for me" mentality that too many kids these days are allowed to get away with. And what is wring with her parents? They need to pull their heads out of their backsides and think about the selfish child they are raising.

[Jonathan Lawson]

10:37 AM on 11/17/2011

selfish parents raise selfish children. Why would you expect her parents to behave any differently than she did. Its also silly that they are saying they weren't notified when the child was on the phone with them at the time.

[aubonpain]

04:51 PM on 11/16/2011

48% of the people think it was dangerous for a 15- year-old with a cell phone, talking to her parents at the very moment, to be removed from a bus. Ridiculous. Two blocks. I just don't know how we use 15- year- olds to babysit our children then. In this day and age, parents are so absent and insane. If this were one of my kids, I'd have them walk to school from then on. If you can not handle yourself on the bus, SIMPLE...you can not ride a bus.
I would suggest though for the next time, that the bus driver continue to drop off kids, say to the student, "I'm going to think about how to handle the fact that you sprayed perfume and failed to give it to me when I asked." Turn the student in and let admin take care of it.

[Darter75]

03:33 PM on 11/16/2011

Another instance of a spoiled teenager defying school authority and whining to Mommy and Daddy. Our country is so bad about this; I read of a mother who called up her son's company commander during boot camp and insisted he make the drill instructor go easier on her baby boy. This girl will go right on with her defiant attitude until something really bad happens and then people will say "What happened? She had a nice home,nice parents etc..."

[salvadorlourdes]

02:15 PM on 11/16/2011

If the bus smells, it needs to be cleaned. Perfume doesn't clean, it just adds to the stink. Perfume is also toxic and contains many unregulated chemicals that lead to allergies, asthma, attention deficit, behavioral problems and negative health effects. Common sense dictates not to do spray it all over a full bus of kids. The rules are in place for a purpose. Clearly the girl needs to get a clue about what she was doing and how it affects those around her. The right thing to do would have been to notify the school staff that the bus needed cleaning.

[Darter75]

03:34 PM on 11/16/2011

All school buses smell bad.

[gloriaswanson43]

05:13 PM on 11/16/2011

No, perfumes are not toxic. The chemicals in them are highly regulated.

[salvadorlourdes]

07:45 PM on 11/16/2011

Quite to the contrary, only a mere 20% of the 3,000 - 5,000 chemical ingredients used in perfumes are tested for human safety. Independent studies have found many chemical ingredients in perfumes which are unlabeled and listed as toxic waste by the US Environmental Protection Agency. The industry has no independent regulator body at all. It's merely "self" regulated.

[IrieMoon]

11:37 AM on 11/17/2011

No gloria, they're not.

The ingredients in perfumes are considered a "trade secret" so they do not have to be disclosed and are not regulated.

[Nick2]

11:44 AM on 11/16/2011

I'm so glad I quit the teaching profession. If a kid with asthma had been on that bus, they could have died. I used to have coughing and sneezing fits all the time because some girl (or guy) would decide to spray perfume or cologne in my classroom.

Also, the parents are trying to say they weren't notified even though she was talking to them on her phone as it happened? They didn't dump her in the middle of nowhere.

[Darter75]

03:39 PM on 11/16/2011

I'm glad to be retired also. I cannot imagine what classrooms are like now. I quit after a kid threw a pair of scissors across the room inches from my face. Before that some Momma's little darling dropped his large, heavy,science project off a second story balcony missing me by a couple of feet. My school was supposedly made up of nice kids but unfortunately the school board had other kids bused in from miles away and they weren't so nice. Neither were their parents.

[Nick2]

10:51 AM on 11/17/2011

My last few years of teaching involved defending myself against my students who would lie about what we did in class, and what I said to them. I invited the administration to put a hidden camera in my room or at least a digital recorder, but they declined. The parents were always making excuses for their children and making unfounded accusations. It didn't matter what work the students actually did or how they performed on a test because their parents were always there to make excuses and complaints. The students weren't held accountable for anything. Lots of my were or are still teachers, and it's seems to be the same experience all over the country.

[Sammka]

10:51 AM on 11/16/2011

I'm kind of amazed at how many people seem to think that a 15-year-old kid was not "safe" when she was dropped off in front of ANOTHER SCHOOL, two blocks away from her own school, in broad daylight. I was going all over the place on my own as a 15-year-old, even though I was relatively immature and over-protected compared to my peers. At 15 a girl is pretty much the same size as an adult; she's not not particularly easier to just snatch off the street than an adult woman. She was in front of a middle school, which means she was dropped off in the exact same place that thousands of other kids years younger than her are safely dropped off every day. Moreover, her parents knew exactly where she was since she was on the phone with them at the time.

Do we seriously think that high-school-aged kids are so helpless that they can't walk two blocks by themselves in the middle of the day without getting kidnapped?

[Darter75]

03:42 PM on 11/16/2011

Look around. The same teenagers parents are so worried about, are going to rock concerts (where anything goes) and hanging out around movie theaters and shopping malls with friends.

[irishdoc]

06:20 PM on 11/16/2011

Unfortunately people do think that. It's scary the lack of common sense we have in this country and is not surprising that our children are failing to launch.

[cree1997]

09:22 AM on 11/16/2011

. According to Warwick Cairns, author of "How to Live Dangerously," the possibility of someone kidnapping a child is not actually huge. He estimates that it would take 750,000 hours for that to absolutely happen if you were to leave your child on a street corner.

This part of the story is what disturbs me most, to anyone that has had a kid grabbed I think they would be shocked to know that Warwick says it would take 750,000 hours for it to happen

[nikkitytom]

05:32 AM on 11/16/2011

Not too surprising that this little brat should behave so stupidly. Look at the response from her parents. Mine would have grounded me. And I WALKED a mile and a half to school and no one fretted whether I was SAFE. I am sick to death of these spoiled whining children who behave badly and have parents right and ready to threaten law suits and action. The only action those parents should be taking right now is punishing their whining "treasure".

[libbyejansen]

04:45 AM on 11/16/2011

So a person that can't tolerate a smell isn't allowed to try and make herself more comfortable and probably avoid nausea, a physical complaint as valid as your sensitivity to scents. If you wish to go the fumes route then consider all the outgassing from what they use to clean public transportation as well as the fabrics that outgas and the fumes from motor vehicles. No matter how much they reduce emissions there are still emissions and with the vast amounts of traffic that is a far bigger contributor to any breathing problems.

[aubonpain]

04:53 PM on 11/16/2011

I'm not going to even respond to how ridiculous this response is.

[libbyejansen]

03:45 AM on 11/17/2011

but you did! so that makes you ridiculous too. so how does it feel?

[Fran Jaime]

07:43 PM on 11/16/2011

I love perfume but it is not good for covering up smells. If it stank on the bus, the prefume just added a sweet, flowery smell on top making it more disgusting (think decomposing fruit). Also, some asmathics are violently allergic to perfume if it is sprayed on the bus. They can tolerate it on a person but not when it is just sprayed into the air.

[libbyejansen]

03:52 AM on 11/17/2011

Not all perfumes are sweet scents dear, there are all kinds. I am well aware that perfume doen't cover up or eliminate odors that is why they are selling air deodorizrs sprays now. As I said in the post there are far worse triggers in the air all ready. and Drs have also pointed out that emotion is also a trigger in asthma at tacks I was pointing out that most perfumes have chemicals in them that more then likely are the triggers( like the chemicals in the air we breathe daily, those can rise in level when spraying a perfume about what a particular person can take.

[notsayingnuffen]

04:41 AM on 11/16/2011

Good!! I hate women who do that. They don't give any consideration to the people around them. I usually end up getting a migraine from it.

Her dad has a girls name?

[ManwithaParachute]

03:19 AM on 11/16/2011

"PERFUME" is still FUMES.

Lots of us cannot tolerate regular use of artificial scents. Just because you are so insecure about your hygiene that you take Madison Avenue's version of acceptable smell over the rest of humanity does not mean that I have to die because some BS fake smells closed up my respiratory system.

[OBUMMER-LOVER]

02:52 AM on 11/16/2011

Raise yor kid properly and this would never had happedend, take your parentil resonsibility, dopey parenthood