Dillard, Chief Judge.Fulton County School District d/b/a Fulton County Schools or Fulton County School System (“FCSD”) appeals the trial court’s denial of its motion to dismiss a negligence action brought against it by Loretta Jenkins, as the guardian and natural grandmother of C. J. E., a minor. Specifically, FCSD argues that the trial court erred in finding that OCGA § 20-2-1090 waives its sovereign immunity from Jenkins’s suit. For the reasons set forth infra, we reverse. The facts necessary to resolve this appeal are undisputed. On February 23, 2017, Jenkins filed this civil action against FCSD on behalf of her grandson, C. J. E., who is a special-needs middle school student. The complaint alleged that on February 24, 2015, C. J. E. boarded a FCSD school bus, but when the bus arrived at the school, the driver failed to ensure that C. J. E. exited the bus along with the other students. As a result, C. J. E. remained on the bus while the driver parked it in the school’s transportation-system parking lot for the evening, and the child was unwittingly locked inside by the driver. The complaint alleged that “[C. J. E.] was not found or located for hours, during which time he suffered physical and mental injuries, including being cold, scared and traumatized from the event and being detained and locked in the bus alone.” To recover for these injuries, Jenkins asserted negligence claims on C. J. E.’s behalf against the bus driver and FCSD as her employer.[1] FCSD answered the complaint and asserted numerous affirmative defenses, including that Jenkins’s claims were barred by the doctrine of sovereign immunity. Along with its answer, FCSD also filed a motion to dismiss the complaint on sovereign-immunity grounds. Jenkins then filed an amended complaint, alleging, inter alia, that OCGA § 20-2-1090 requires school districts to have insurance policies covering school children, and OCGA § 33-24-51 (b), along with other Georgia statutes, waives sovereign immunity to the extent of that insurance coverage for incidents like the one involving C. J. E. Jenkins also filed a response to FCSD’s motion to dismiss, asserting similar arguments. Ultimately, the trial court concluded that OCGA § 20-2-1090 waives FCSD’s sovereign immunity for Jenkins’s claims. Thereafter, the trial court granted FCSD’s request for a certificate of immediate review, and this Court granted its application for an interlocutory appeal. This appeal follows.In its sole argument on appeal, FCSD argues that the trial court erred in finding that OCGA § 20-2-1090 waives its sovereign immunity from Jenkins’s claims. We agree.This Court reviews de novo a “trial court’s ruling on a motion to dismiss based on sovereign immunity grounds, which is a matter of law.”[2] The trial court’s factual findings will, of course, be sustained if “there is evidence supporting them, and the burden of proof is on the party seeking the waiver of immunity.”[3] With these guiding principles in mind, we turn now to FCSD’s specific claim of error. As we have previously explained, sovereign immunity extends to the State and all of its departments and agencies, “including school districts.”[4] Further, it is well settled that the sovereign immunity of the State and its departments and agencies can only be waived by an Act of the General Assembly, which “specifically provides that sovereign immunity is thereby waived and the extent of such waiver.”[5] And it necessarily follows that “implied waivers of sovereign immunity are not favored.”[6] Furthermore, sovereign immunity is not “an affirmative defense that must be established by the party seeking its protection.”[7] To the contrary, immunity from suit is “a privilege that is subject to waiver by the State, and the waiver must be established by the party seeking to benefit from the waiver.”[8] Significantly, in the context of the sovereign-immunity doctrine, “statutes providing for a waiver of sovereign immunity are in derogation of the common law and thus are to be strictly construed against a finding of waiver.”[9] Lastly, the doctrine of sovereign immunity requires that “the conditions and limitations of the statute that waives immunity be strictly followed.”[10] And here, the trial court found that FCSD’s sovereign immunity from Jenkins’s claims is waived by OCGA § 20-2-1090, which provides:The various school boards of the counties, cities, and independent school systems employing school buses are authorized and required to cause policies of insurance to be issued insuring the school children riding therein to and from school against bodily injury or death at any time resulting from an accident or collision in which such buses are involved. The amount of such insurance shall be within the discretion of the respective boards.
