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| Tammie Simpson |
08/24/2011
By Dianne Derby
Anderson - Tammie Simpson is willing to do whatever it takes to keep her 11-year-old son safe, especially since South Carolina's sex offender registry shows 42 sex offenders live in a two mile radius of her home.
- Except take her son to the bus stop and wait, or take her son to school. Sounds like she's not willing to do "anything" to me.
"I have actually showed my son hey this is a sex offender remember that face," said Simpson.
So when her son told her he and other students were being dropped off next to the home of a registered sex offender, she started making calls to Anderson School District Five asking for the bus stop to be moved.
"Every time I tried to talk to the district it was a dead end," said Simpson. "Nobody called me nobody done anything."
Anderson School District Five spokesperson Bill Baker wouldn't talk to me on camera. In an email, he told me middle school and elementary routes run through this neighborhood every day, but he said no child on Simpson's street actually has to walk past the offender's residence on their walk home.
Baker also said, "Regardless of who lives next door or across the street, we have a responsibility to pick up these students and transport them to school as safely as possible. We are doing this in a professional and conscientious manner."
The good news for Simpson is the district added a bus stop at her home this week. It's a step they told me they did before I called.
"Well that's mighty funny I never saw the district out here til the day I called ya'll," said Simpson. "That's when they got on their toes and done something when I called News 7."
Simpson hopes other parents keep a watchful eye on how close their child's bus stop is to a registered sex offender.
"They can go online and do this," she said. "If you don't have a computer at home you can go to the library and do it."
We checked with other districts in our area to see how they handle planning their bus routes with sex offenders living in neighborhoods. Spartanburg District two told me bus stops are designed for efficiency and are not based on sex offender residences. They said parents can call the transportation office with concerns. Greenville County schools told me stops are based on where students live and they will change the route if possible when concerns are brought to their attention.
