A bus driver who struck and killed a 14-year-old schoolboy with her heavy vehicle should have been jailed for longer than two years, prosecutors have argued.
Penina Lopesi, 56, was behind the wheel during the fatal accident outside Macarthur Anglican School in Cobbitty, southwest of Sydney, in February 2023.
She pleaded guilty to one count of dangerous driving occasioning death and was sentenced in September at Campbelltown District Court to two years behind bars.
She was sent to Silverwater women's prison.
Judge David Arnott imposed a one-year non-parole period that will expire in September.
But the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions has challenged the sentence in the Court of Criminal Appeal, arguing the sentence imposed was "manifestly inadequate".
The appeal will come before the court for a hearing on November 21.
Video footage played to the Campbelltown District Court showed students boarding the bus before it took off and appeared to narrowly miss a tree when mounting a kerb.
The bus then slowed to a halt and Lopesi could be seen looking around as students left the bus in a panic and a crowd gathered.
She started violently shaking her head and body in the driver's seat.
In a victim impact statement previously read to the court, the mother of the boy remembered their final weekend together.
During his last days, she told him he needed to be nicer to his teachers because he only needed one more merit award to get to the next level.
Receiving his school diary the day after he died was a moment that would stay with her forever, she told the court.
“I will never forget the pain of opening it and seeing in the front sleeve a merit certificate for history," the mother said.
“He received it a few hours before being killed.”
The dangerous driving charge carries a maximum 10-year prison term.
