A Belleville, IL, family has questions about a school bus incident that the surveillance video would answer, which is why they say they’ve been asking to see the video for the last four months.

Stacy and Mic Barringer say their 9-year-old daughter told them in April that a Belleville school bus driver slapped their son, who was 6-years-old, on his arm.

At the time of the alleged incident, the school district, Belleville District 118, had a contract with the private bus company First Student, Inc., which employed the driver.

The driver was later reassigned to a different route, according to the family and the district.

“We have yet to see what happened to our kid that day,” Stacy Barringer said.

District 118 declined to release the surveillance video to the family because of privacy concerns for other students on the bus that day and because the Illinois School Student Records Act doesn’t require the district to release it, Superintendent Matt Klosterman said.

Surveillance video would become part of a student record if a child involved in a recorded incident was disciplined, according to Klosterman. At that point, the child and his or her parents would be given an opportunity to watch the video in order to question the discipline.

The Barringers have hired a lawyer to help them get the video.

“If they don’t show us by a certain date, then we will just file a lawsuit. And we’ll see the video either way,” Stacy Barringer said. “But the reason we want to see the video is so we can make a decision on which route we should take from this point.”