ROUND ROCK, Texas -- Parents of a former Teravista Elementary School student are suing Round Rock ISD, claiming the school lost their daughter on several occasions.

  • Incidents happened between Fall of 2017 and Fall of 2018
  • Suit alleges girl was sent home from school on the bus four times
  • Girl allegedly should have been in an after school program 

The incidents happened between the Fall of 2017 and Fall of 2018 when the student was in Kindergarten and first grade. 

The lawsuit alleges the girl was sent home from school on the bus four times when she should have been in an after school program. On three of those occasions a bus driver noticed the girl's mother, Candy Ivette Mendoza, was not at the bus stop to pick her up as she usually is. 

The bus driver decided to take the girl back to school. Mendoza claims she was not notified by the school and the program even sent the typical automated email stating the girl was checked in. The lawsuit claims the parents met with the school after each time the girl was misplaced, but nothing changed.

Mendoza works as a data analyst and often works with spreadsheets. She offered to make a computer program for the school to make the process of checking students in and out easier.

The lawsuit states the principal and after school care program coordinator were initially receptive, but the program was never implemented. In December of 2018, the girl was sent home from school for the fourth time instead of being taken to the after school program. The lawsuit mentions on this particular day it was cold and a substitute bus driver took Mendoza's daughter home. The driver was unfamiliar with the students and parents and let the girl walk home.

Mendoza says she was out of town and her fiancé was planning on picking the child up from the program at 5 p.m. Instead, the girl knocked on the door of her house and found out her parents were gone. She went door to door to the family's "trusted neighbors," but no one was home either.

"What if somebody had snatched my kid? What if somebody had kidnapped my kid? She was left alone in the cold ad she was crying and she was screaming for help,” said Mendoza.

The lawsuit states after 30 minutes, another neighbor found her and let her come inside her home to stay warm. Since the incident, Mendoza has taken her daughter to therapy and enrolled her in another school, but she still suffers every day.

"After all of this had happened, she refused to go to school. She would throw up on herself because she didn't want to go to school. She doesn't talk too much anymore. She's very quiet,” said Mendoza.

Mendoza believes the lawsuit is a way to hold the school and the district accountable.

"It's not fair. It's not fair what she has gone through," she said.

Round Rock ISD released this statement on the lawsuit:

"We don’t generally comment on a lawsuit we haven’t received, and are unable to speak specifically to the situation due to FERPA, but are aware of the claim. The safety of our students is our first priority, and that includes during the transportation of students before and after school hours. If issues do present themselves, we take immediate corrective matters to address them. Again, we aren’t able to speak to specifics, but what we can share is that statements made pre-litigation may not accurately represent actual events and as details come forward through the litigation process may change the understanding of events as evident in the recent Kenyon non-renewal hearing held on August 5, 2019."