Allegations that a Windham school bus driver was allowed to drive immediately after threatening suicide are being investigated by a Windham town councilor.

Kaile Warren said Tuesday at the Town Council meeting that two employees of the Windham School District told him that on Dec. 10, a driver, despondent over his divorce, told a supervisor that he wanted to take his own life.

Warren was then told the driver was allowed to make his morning run for the middle and high school students. He then returned to the bus garage, where members of the Windham Police Department were waiting for him and he was voluntarily taken to a mental hospital.

The Windham police log has an entry at 8:09 a.m. on Dec. 10 of a suicide or attempted suicide. The Windham bus garage was listed as the location and the log said someone was taken to a hospital.

Windham Police Chief Rick Lewsen said he could not comment because of legal restrictions surrounding emergency 911 calls and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which restricts him from giving out medical information.

“If the investigation yields what I suspect, the supervisors responsible for this should be terminated,” said Warren.

Warren said he received phone calls about the allegations several weeks ago.

“Both of them said they had trouble sleeping because this was so heavy on their minds,” said Warren.

Margo Fournier, school transportation director who supervises and dispatches the bus drivers, said Wednesday she was not allowed to speak to the media and directed all questions to the superintendent’s office.

“We did have a bus incident, we dealt with it quickly,” said Superintendent Sandy Prince. He said he can not say anything further because of the personnel issues involved.

“It’s a personnel matter that I can not divulge,” said Don Davis, business manager of the Windham School Department. He emphasized that the school department takes situations like this very seriously and declined to comment further.

Warren said he has encountered problems getting school officials to go on the record for this issue.

“They assured me that they had not had their heads in the sand in regards to this issue,” he said. “Don (Davis) told me that they had heard of the issue I had raised and that they had gone to the source and taken actions to correct the process. I pushed to get details, but was told that they could not be turned over to me.”

“I have not heard that he threatened the children directly,” said Warren. He said his focus is not on the bus driver, but the way the school department handled the situation.

“Given the very serious nature of the suspected process failure, I believe that the citizens deserve to know who knew what and when they learned of the issues,” said Warren.

“I specifically asked for any human resources as well as crisis management procedures,” said Warren. He said he could not get an answer to if the school has any policy for what to do when an employee has a mental health issue that endangers lives.

Prince said that the school does have policies in place surrounding student safety and this situation has not caused those polices to be changed.

Warren said he would like to hold a special town meeting to discuss changing the way the transportation department is managed.

Wednesday morning, it was announced that there would be a special meeting of the Windham School Board in executive session that night to “review an employee matter.” Prince would not say if the meeting was related to the matter at hand.

Parents were disturbed when they learned of the alleged incident.

“That’s not news that you want to hear at all,” said Kimberly Leighton of Roosevelt Trail, who has a daughter in the eighth-grade. Leighton said last month her daughter’s bus driver suddenly was replaced and has not returned.

Denna Wilson of Gray Road has three children in the Windham school system.

“That’s unacceptable to have someone drive a vehicle and have everyone at risk,” said Wilson. “Would you want to be on that bus?”

“It’s frightening,” said Heidi Cobb of Gray Road. “You can’t predict how someone is going to act in a state of mind like that.”

“This should disturb every parent, or anyone who has any compassion at all,” said Warren. “I’m going to aggressively pursue this until all the questions are answered.”