My Daughter Refused The Field Trip. Hours Later The School Called: The Bus Went Off A Cliff.

The remaining two board members announced they would not seek re-election. The state appointed an interim superintendent and placed the district under emergency oversight.

Then the lawsuits began in earnest. Twenty-three families filed wrongful death lawsuits against the district, seeking damages for negligence and willful misconduct.

The lawsuit cited the state investigation findings, Carl Whitmore’s safety reports, and the documented pattern of deferred maintenance as evidence that the district had knowingly endangered students. The families also sued the bus manufacturer and the company that had conducted the failed safety inspection, but the primary target was the school district and its leadership.

I was deposed in several of the lawsuits, asked to testify about budget meetings, maintenance discussions, and the general culture of cost-cutting that had prevailed in the district. I told the truth, provided documentation from union files, and watched as attorneys built a case that the crash wasn’t an accident but the predictable result of years of negligent decision-making.

The depositions were brutal. Defense attorneys tried to paint me as a disgruntled employee with an axe to grind—someone who’d been suspended for policy violations and was now trying to get revenge by exaggerating the district’s failures.

But the documentary evidence was too strong. Carl Whitmore’s reports, the state investigation findings, the failed inspection records, and the budget documents showing systematic cuts to maintenance funding provided proof that couldn’t be explained away.

The cases went to mediation rather than trial. The district’s insurance carriers, facing potential judgments in the hundreds of millions of dollars, pushed for settlement.

After three months of negotiation, the district agreed to pay a total of $98 million to the families of the victims. This was funded by insurance coverage and a special state appropriation that would be repaid through increased local property taxes over 20 years.

A Legacy of Reform

The settlement also included provisions requiring the district to implement comprehensive safety protocols and retire all buses over 10 years old. They had to establish a standing safety committee with parent representation and submit to ongoing state oversight for a minimum of five years.

It wasn’t justice, not really. No amount of money could bring back the 25 people who died.

But it was accountability, and it was change. It was an acknowledgement that what happened had been preventable.

My suspension was lifted after the union grievance was upheld by an independent arbitrator who found that the district had violated my rights to engage in protected speech. I was offered my job back with full back pay and a formal letter of apology.

I declined the job but accepted the back pay, using it to hire an attorney to help me establish a nonprofit organization focused on school transportation safety advocacy. I called it the Cascade Ridge Safety Foundation, named after the road where 25 people had died because adults in positions of authority had made decisions that prioritized money over lives.

Zoe went back to school eventually, but not to Milbrook Elementary. We transferred her to a private school in the next district—a place where she could start over without being known as the girl who survived when her entire class died.

She saw a therapist, Dr. Jennifer Quan, who specialized in childhood trauma and survivor’s guilt. Dr. Quan said Zoe was processing the crash as well as could be expected.

Zoe understood on some level that her refusal to board the bus had saved her life, but she also felt guilty that her friends had died while she lived.

“It’s developmentally normal,” Dr. Quan explained during one of our family sessions. “Zoe can’t fully grasp the randomness of survival at her age. She’s looking for a reason why she lived and they died, and she’s internalizing it as something she did or didn’t do.”

“Our job is to help her understand that she made a choice based on a feeling and that choice happened to save her life. But she’s not responsible for what happened to the other children.” Dr. Quan said.

“The adults who maintained that bus, who certified it as safe, who put it on the road despite knowing it had brake problems—those are the people responsible.” She concluded.

Zoe asked me once, about six months after the crash, if I thought she’d really known the bus was going to crash or if it had just been a bad dream.

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” I told her honestly. “But I’m grateful every day that you trusted your fear enough to refuse to get on that bus. You saved your own life by listening to that feeling, and that’s something to be proud of, not ashamed of.”

Richard and I testified before the State Legislature when they held hearings on school transportation safety reform. We told Zoe’s story, explained how close we’d come to losing her, and advocated for mandatory safety inspections with real enforcement mechanisms.

The Legislature passed the Cascade Ridge Student Safety Act eight months after the crash. It established new standards for school bus maintenance, required annual independent safety inspections, and created penalties for districts that operated vehicles with expired certifications.

It wouldn’t bring back the children who died, but it might prevent the next tragedy. Julie Brennan won a state journalism award for her investigation into the crash and the district’s safety failures.

In her acceptance speech, she thanked me by name for having the courage to speak up when the district tried to silence the truth.

“Katherine Keller risked her career to tell the truth about how budget decisions kill children,” She said. “That’s what journalism is supposed to do—hold power accountable. But we can’t do it without sources who are willing to step forward, even when there are consequences. Katherine stepped forward, and because she did, 23 families got justice and thousands of students are safer today.”

I watched the speech from home, sitting next to Zoe on the couch. We’d bought a new house after the settlement, away from Milbrook and the constant reminders of the crash.

“Mommy, are you famous?” Zoe asked.

“No, sweetie,” I said. “I’m just someone who told the truth when it would have been easier to stay quiet.”

The Weight of the Truth

Two years after the crash, on the anniversary of the day 25 people died because a school district decided maintenance was too expensive, there was a memorial dedication in Milbrook. The families of the victims had worked with the town to create a permanent monument.

It was a granite wall inscribed with the names of everyone who’d been on that bus: 23 children ages 7 to 10 and two teachers who dedicated their lives to education. I attended with Richard and Zoe, standing at the back of the crowd as parents and siblings and friends placed flowers at the base of the wall.

Zoe wanted to leave flowers too—roses for her former classmates, children whose empty desks she’d never sit next to again.

“I miss them,” She told me, holding my hand as we walked up to the monument. “I know it’s not my fault they’re gone. Dr. Quan says so, but I still miss them and I wish they were here.”

“I miss them too,” I said. “And it’s okay to miss them. It’s okay to be sad that they’re gone. What’s not okay is pretending their deaths were just an accident, just bad luck, just something that happened for no reason.”

“They died because adults made bad choices and we have to remember that so we can make sure it doesn’t happen again.” I added.

We placed the roses at the memorial, and I read the names etched in granite. They were names I would never forget—children who should have grown up to graduate high school and go to college and have families of their own.

Their futures were stolen by negligence disguised as fiscal responsibility. The lawsuits had been settled, the leadership had been replaced, and the laws had been changed, but the children were still dead.

No amount of accountability or reform or justice would ever change that fundamental truth. Zoe and I stood there for a long time, reading names, remembering faces, and honoring lives that had been cut short by the preventable failure of a brake system that should have been repaired eight months before it killed 25 people.

Eventually, we walked back to our car—back to our new life, back to the future that Zoe had by refusing to board a bus she somehow knew was dangerous. I don’t know if it was prescience or intuition or just random terror that happened to be correct, but I know that I listened to my daughter when she was afraid and that listening saved her life.

I know that when the district tried to cover up its role in those deaths, I spoke up instead of staying silent. That speaking helped bring about change that might save other children’s lives.

It’s not enough. It will never be enough, but it’s what I could do, and so I did it.