LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A school district here is adding 20 bus monitors in response to the results of an audit by the Kentucky Department of Education, WDRB reports.

Jefferson County Public Schools’ new monitors, which were approved in July by the Jefferson County Board of Education, will be assigned based on need to the district’s general-education bus routes, according to the news source. Buses for special-needs students will have special-needs transportation assistants aboard.

Monitors will not be on buses covering every route, WDRB reports. Factors that will help determine which buses will have monitors aboard include whether the bus must stop at a depot during its route, or whether a bus is transporting a large number of students for long periods of time, Mike Raisor, the chief operations officer for the district, told the news source. The additional monitors will cost the district $460,500.

However, Rhonda Martin, the mother of a 17-year-old boy with severe autism who was sexually assaulted on the bus, told WDRB that monitors on some buses would not have prevented her son’s assault, and that “if they are not SNTAs [special-needs transportation assistants] and they are not aboard every single bus a child is on with special needs, then they’re not even making a drop in the bucket.” She added that she tried four times to get a monitor placed on her son’s bus after he began pulling out his feeding tube and coming home with his clothes in disarray, and that one was placed on the bus after the incident came to light. Martin reached a $500,000 settlement with the district over her son's assault.

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