On the second day of school at Round Hill Elementary, a five-year-old boy named De Terryon walked out to what he thought was pickup. Instead, he climbed onto a bus. He was a car rider, not a bus rider, he wasn't supposed to be on it at all.

Roanoke, VA

Author: Roanoke Rambler Staff

Published: 1:00 AM EST August 26, 2026

Edited: 1:01 AM EST August 26, 2026

The bus's only stop that route was Westwind Apartments, across town from where his parents, Terry Mills and Danielle Howard, were waiting at the school. For a stretch of time that felt far longer to the family than it was on paper, no one could tell them where their son was. A fellow student walked De Terryon into the apartment complex's leasing office, where the assistant manager immediately recognized something was wrong and called the school. Roanoke City Public Schools (RCPS) says roughly 17 minutes passed between the boy stepping off the bus and that phone call.

"Our students' safety is Roanoke City Public Schools' top priority," said Claire Mitzel, the district's director of communications and public relations, in a statement after the Aug. 20 incident. RCPS said it investigated, that "appropriate personnel actions are being taken," and that it is working with its bus contractor, Zum, "to ensure students, RCPS staff, and bus drivers follow the bus and car rider procedures" going forward. The family met with a division leader after the boy was picked up, and the district thanked Westwind Apartments' staff for their role in getting him home safely.

It was a frightening afternoon for one family, and it landed in the middle of a school year that Roanoke's district leaders are trying hard to frame as a turnaround story. Zoom out from Round Hill, and the numbers tell a more complicated, occasionally more encouraging, picture of how the city's schools opened for roughly 14,000 students this fall.

A superintendent's 53rd first day

RCPS Superintendent Dr. Verletta White welcomed students back on Aug. 11 for what she has said will be her final "first day of school" before retiring at the end of the 2026-27 year, closing out a 35-year career in public education and seven years leading the Roanoke division. It was, by her own count, her 53rd first day of school overall. She spent it visiting classrooms, greeting students, and at Wasena Elementary, reading to a fifth-grade class.

"As a superintendent, this is my recommitment as well, as we're starting this first day of school, to say that we're all in. We're all in for our students," White said excitedly.

That optimism came against a tighter budget than in past years. RCPS opened the school year absorbing roughly $14 million in cuts, eliminating activity buses for the fall semester and shifting to shared teachers in some buildings, while trimming the elementary gifted program, PLATO. White has said the district worked to shield classrooms from the worst of the reductions (Roanoke Rambler).

By the numbers (according to RCPS)

• ~14,000 — students enrolled across RCPS's 28-plus schools this year
• 6,824 — pre-K through fifth-grade students alone, as of the spring enrollment count division officials gave ahead of this fall's rezoning
• ~250 — elementary students shifting to a different school this year, largely tied to the reopening of a renovated Preston Park Elementary, which is absorbing about 124 additional students, while Monterey Elementary loses about 141 and Fallon Park gains 63
• 1,000+ — students who received free school supplies and other resources ahead of the year, per the district
• $14 million — in budget cuts absorbed this year, including the elimination of activity buses and shared teaching positions
• 150 drivers for 115 routes — the driver "buffer" regional schools, including RCPS, built in ahead of the Aug. 11 start, after years of transportation shortages
• ~97-98% — the on-time bus arrival rate RCPS Chief Operations Officer Chris Perkins reported this year, up from roughly 70% before the district switched transportation vendors
• 17 minutes — how long RCPS says elapsed between the Round Hill kindergartner stepping off his bus and the call that got him home

The transportation backstory

The Round Hill incident didn't happen in a vacuum. RCPS spent years fielding complaints about its former bus contractor, Durham School Services, before awarding a five-year, $77 million contract to Zum in March 2024, a deal explicitly framed as a fix for chronic late buses and unreliable routing. A year and a half into that partnership, Perkins has publicly credited Zum, along with route consolidation and schedule changes, with pushing on-time arrivals from around 70% to nearly 98% according to early numbers. Ahead of this year's opening, regional districts also worked to build in extra driver capacity, RCPS and its neighbors rostered roughly a 25% buffer, 150 drivers for 115 routes, anticipating the kind of shortages that have plagued school transportation nationally.

That context matters for how the Round Hill incident should be read: it was a car-rider-versus-bus-rider mix-up rather than a routing failure, and the response, a same-day investigation, a same-day family meeting, and an announced review of boarding procedures with Zum was fast by the standard of similar incidents elsewhere. A nearly identical case in Baltimore County last year, where a kindergartner was mistakenly placed on a departing bus, was also resolved the same day, according to that district (CBS News).

Not just a city story

The first-day reset wasn't confined to Roanoke City. Roanoke County Public Schools opened its year Aug. 13 under new leadership as well, with incoming superintendent Jamie Soltis marking his own first day on the job alongside returning students. Taken together, the two neighboring divisions spent the same week juggling the same basic back-to-school math: enrollment shifts, bus logistics, tighter budgets, and the inevitable first-week hiccups that come with tens of thousands of children changing routines at once.

For RCPS specifically, the Round Hill scare is a reminder that even a system posting real, measurable gains, in on-time buses, in community supply drives, in a superintendent determined to close out her tenure strong, still has to get every single boarding right, every single day, for every single child. The 17 minutes between drop-off and reunion were short by the numbers. For one family in Roanoke, they weren't short at all. Back to school meetings with parents happened for some students and parents this week while the RCPS school board had a workshop on Monday. Dr. White, current RCPS Superintendent and former Baltimore City Schools Superintendent, explained that they are "off to a strong start" in regard to the school year. Before adjourning, the School Board turned to a wider review and acceptance of the 2026-2027 compliance verification report, the framework by which the district is supposed to catch lapses like Round Hill's before a bus ever pulls away from the curb.