Cynthia Morgan, a school bus driver for Hartford County Public Schools in Maryland for more than a decade, was alerted by an alarmed 10-year-old boy on board that there was an injured kitten by the side of the road. Yielding to the young student’s entreaties, Morgan stopped the bus on lightly-trafficked Heaps School Road in Pylesville and allowed the student to retrieve the kitten. The boy held the kitty in his lap until he was dropped off at school, whereupon the bus driver volunteered her lap for kitten-sitting for the rest of the route.
The incident got her fired. Morgan confirmed her dismissal to CBS News Baltimore and said she was devastated by the decision. The mother of the kitten rescuer says that her son would have been “devastated” if the cat has been left to fend for itself. “The fact that she was let go because of an act of kindness does really weigh on him,” she added. “That is unforgivable and cruel.”
Is it? Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Was it ethical—responsible, fair, competent and reasonable—to fire the bus driver for permitting the emergency woulded kitten intervention?
The community, not to mention the influential feline population, is rallying behind Morgan. A petition on Change.org calls for the bus driver to be reinstated. “Over the years, Cynthia has become more than just a bus driver to our children; she is someone they look forward to seeing every morning and afternoon,” one parent wrote. “Her kind and warm nature makes the pupils feel safe and comfortable.This is not just my personal sentiment – countless parents and students share the same view.”
Another told reporters, “Every year at the beginning of the school year she buys every child on the bus school supplies. She buys them gifts for Christmas, every holiday, birthdays; she gives them birthday cards, all out of her own pocket.”
In a meeting with district officials, Morgan defended her actions and insisted that she had not put the student or those remaining in her bus in any jeopardy. For its part, the school system is staying the course. “Certification and decertification are not always based on a single factor but often involve consideration of multiple circumstances and requirements,” the school district said in a statement. “Student safety remains our top priority, and all certification decisions are made with that responsibility in mind.”
That sounds like lawyer-dictated CYA to me. Of course the district would default to an “it was the final straw” stance. Still, maybe it was. A letter from district Transportation Director Danielle Bedsaul cited “multiple incidents” involving Morgan, some including “concerns regarding inappropriate interactions with students.” Was buying students gifts and supplies among those “inappropriate actions”?
She let a student off the bus, on a road, in a place that wasn’t designated as a bus stop of any kind, to pick up a frightened/injured kitty that for all she knew could have had rabies and was going to attack the student, and she was fired; I say they were correct to fire her.
The image of the kid picking up the rabid kitty and it leaping at the boy’s throat has had me giggling for the last five minutes…Monty Python-esque!
Ten points for hitting on the head exactly what I was thinking when I wrote that.
I was in the right frame of mind after talking about Rock Opera’s.
I think that while the bus driver could have handled the situation better (pulling over and calling animal control, for instance), that she deserved another shot. She sounds like the type of driver who really cares about the kids-she’s clearly made them a huge part of her life. That kind of dedication could save a life, spot problems at home, find a runaway kid, spot a kidnapper among parents who don’t belong, etc. I had only bad experiences on the bus growing up, and would have loved someone like this woman. And I was a good kid from a nice family-she is probably a hero to kids who don’t have that in their lives, and to parents who know she can be entrusted with their children. I think she did the ethical thing, even if it wasn’t necessarily the BEST thing.