A completed door cycle and an unresolved count

A fictional school-bus route exercise begins with six students scheduled to leave at a designated stop. The driver observes five reach the safe visible location but cannot account for the sixth after the service door closes. A passenger says the missing student probably went around the bus, while a second student reports seeing a dropped bag near the front wheel. Traffic is waiting and the driver feels pressure to restart the route. The exercise supplies no evidence that the missing child has reached safety and no device that independently accounts for the child. It asks for a decision before the bus moves and for the instruction that should be taught about dropped objects. The task is not permission to leave the vehicle unsecured or to improvise a different district stop procedure.