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Mother: Boy, 4, Was Left Out In Cold After Getting Off School Bus In Yonkers

YONKERS, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) -- A Westchester County mother said Monday that her 4-year-old son was left all alone in the freezing cold after he got off his school bus one day last week.

As CBS2's Elise Finch reported, Rebecca Jacques of Yonkers said her son, Matthew, is a good student who enjoys school. But he now equates school with fear after getting stuck outside the Cross Hill Academy building this past Friday.

It was a snowy morning at the time, and temperatures were in the 20s. Matthew, a pre-kindergartner, said it was not a little bit cold, but "very cold."

"What happened was the bus driver dropped him off at the school, but directly, he has to walk down these stairs to get to the door," Jacques said, "and immediately, the other kids are already inside and he's left behind the door."

Jacques said her son lagged behind the other kids, and because he is too small to open the door himself, he was left outside for several minutes until a staff member let him in.

Three days later, his concerned mother was demanding an answer to one pressing question.

"Where's the bus monitor?" she said. "If there was a bus monitor on this bus directing these kids inside, we would never have gotten to this situation."

A spokeswoman for Yonkers Public Schools says most of their buses do have bus monitors.

"Bus monitors are assigned to special education routes and approximately 80 percent of the District's regular education routes," said Jerilynne Fierstein of the Yonkers Public Schools.

Jacques said she is going to lobby to bring that figure up to 100 percent.

"Transportation has to understand that we need bus monitors on the bus – it doesn't matter if you're small or not. You need to have bus monitors on the bus to make sure our kids, you know, are getting into school safe," she said.

Jacques must argue her case to the school district transportation department, which has the authority to add bus monitors on a case-by-case basis.

Fierstein said a lack of interested people is the main reason there are not monitors on every bus.

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