A local mother is thankful her son with special needs is safe after he arrived home hours late from school.

Ayelet Bortunk lived through a parent’s worst nightmare when her 4-year-old son, who has Down syndrome, did not arrive at home from Fienberg Fisher Elementary, Tuesday.

The boy travels home from school on a school bus each day and usually arrives home shortly after 2 p.m. “This is the public school system, where I entrust my child. He goes there every single day. I rely on them to bring him home to me,” said Bortunk. “When it’s 2 hours and 40 minutes that he doesn’t show up at home, I’m scared.”

The Bortunks received a phone call informing them that their son will be late. By 4:30 p.m., Ayelet Bortunk began to panic. “I don’t know what’s going on. He can’t speak for himself, and it’s very difficult to deal with when you’re calling people and calling people and no one’s answering you,” said Bortunk. “I don’t have any phone numbers to call. No one answers the phone.”

Without knowing where her child was, Bortunk dialed 911, and the police arrived at her home shortly thereafter. “The thoughts that had run through my mind, I don’t even want to say out loud. I mean, I was terrified,” said Bortunk.

The Miami-Dade School District said the buses experienced bad traffic on Tuesday and parents were notified of the delay. But Bortunk said that the explanation was not good enough. “He had nothing to eat, he had nothing to drink. He’s not toilet trained,” said Bortunk. “For 2 hours and 40 minutes, and I don’t know what’s going on, I didn’t understand. I didn’t know if he was on the bus. I didn’t know if he was off the bus. I didn’t even know the route. I don’t know where the bus went. I still don’t know where the bus went.”

At 4:40 p.m. the bus finally pulled up to the Bortunks’ home and reunited the worried mother with her son. “Nobody told me he was in school. I could have gone to pick him up. I didn’t know where he was,” said Bortunk. “Am I supposed to get in my car and drive around to every public school bus and pull them over?”

Bortunk hopes for better communication between schools and parents so that no other parent has to go through what she had to. “I felt as helpless as a parent could feel,” said Bortunk.

School administrators have offered an apology to Bortunk for the incident.

(Source: WSVN)