Chapter Five: Hey Bus Driver

Chapter 5: Hey Bus Driver

Principals are not usually responsible for school busses. In most public schools there is an entire transportation department devoted to maintaining vehicles, recruiting, training and hiring bus drivers, and arranging for substitute drivers. But I am responsible for a fleet of busses and the people who drive them. This is way out of my comfort zone. Once I changed the oil on my motorcycle, but that was more than two decades ago and I was dually inspired by Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and the desire to impress a cute boy. I am so doomed. Did you know bus drivers have to pass a flex test and their license must have a “P” endorsement? Me neither, and that’s just one example of my low bus IQ.

Meet the Drivers or: You’re either on the bus or off the bus

During the summer, Shasta schedules several bus driver meetings and training sessions. These meetings always begin with breakfast. My vegetarian nose wrinkles as my six drivers sit outside my office and dig into Styrofoam trays steaming with buttered grits, sausages, bacon, grilled ham, eggs, toast, biscuits with sausage gravy and deep fried potatoes cubed with cheese and bacon on top. Salt is added to everything and grease oozes from fissures in the Styrofoam. Lynne, my business manager warns me this is a bus driver tradition and during the school year, after the morning bus runs, the drivers will gather here daily chowing down on their Southern breakfasts. I tend to understand people better than machinery, but my team of drivers has “issues”, to put it mildly. When I start the year, my budget spreadsheet lists six drivers: Cherill, Jed, Wanda, Nina, Quentin and Ellie.

Cherill is the daughter of Mel, my predecessor. She was hired as a bus driver but didn’t have a license so he made her a teacher. (Oh, and she has never been to college.) But she’s still on the driver’s roster for some reason.

Jed is a morbidly obese man who can’t pass the physical for bus driver and skipped the mandatory training. One of the busses has a modified driver’s seat; it has been reattached far from the steering wheel to accommodate his girth.

Wanda is also very overweight and has many health issues and her mother has health issues and Wanda called in sick all the time last year.

Nina is a close friend of Shasta’s, my transportation coordinator. She is a thin, petite woman who acts as though she only drives a bus as a favor to Shasta.

Quentin is the only black driver. This strikes me as odd since the public school bus drivers in Herald County are disproportionately black. I can only guess that since Mel, who is white, hired people he knew, he mostly knows white folks. Quentin has a dry sense of humor but gets rattled by the antics of our students, especially the girls.

Ellie is a very opinionated grandmother. On more than one occasion I catch her photocopying and then stuffing into faculty mailboxes some vitriolic diatribes. The title of one missive, which I assume is aimed at Florida’s growing immigrant population, is: “Go Back to Mexico.”

Cherill and Jed have to be fired immediately. Not passing the physical and not having a license make this an easy decision. Wanda should probably be off the bus too, but it doesn’t feel ethical to do that and it’s probably illegal too.

I can’t seem to attract new, competent drivers. There is a major equity issue between the pay we offer our drivers and the pay offered by the public school; Prospect pays three dollar less per hour and doesn’t offer any benefits. I change my budget and raise the pay for bus drivers from $8.00 an hour to $11.00 an hour (effective after 90 days) and put an advertisement in the paper looking for new drivers. At the end of June, I hire my first new driver, Beverly.

A few days after I hire her, Beverly phones me to complain about the fact that she will have to pay $35 for a DOT physical. She is also upset when she learns she will have to take a two-day driving course but not be paid for the time. We talk, she confronts me: “If you don’t mind me asking, just what are you doing for the bus drivers?” I tell her I am paying their salaries. She quits. She is a friend of Rosie, one of my teachers. She tells Rosie she quit because she does not like Shasta’s attitude.

I hire another new driver, Audra. She doesn’t object to paying for her physical, attending training or dealing with difficult students. And so I start the school year with a team of five drivers. But will they have busses to drive?

There are five busses parked on my south campus. My liaison, and new friend in the public schools, Dr. Henry Sevier, offers to have his transportation department examine my busses free of charge to assess their condition.

The word from the transportation department is not good. Three of the five busses are deemed too unsafe to carry children and the repairs required to make them safe far exceed the value of the busses. The two mini busses could be salvageable with some repairs. I phone for help from Ebencorp, the parent company for Prospect Schools. I receive vague promises that someone is negotiating with another county to buy four used 65-seat busses. The call does not inspire confidence. I worry my busses will be lost in the flood of other more pressing projects. And to top it all off, there is the matter of Tappy Gonzales.

Tappy Gonzales was married to Stephanie, my orientation leader. Well, legally they still are married, but they’re separated. Tappy Gonzales is a mechanic and Mel, my predecessor, not following the rules regarding outside contractors and apparently unconcerned about nepotism, used Tappy Gonzales as our bus mechanic. The results include questionable business deals, work in lieu of parts, padded bills and a missing bus.

Shortly after arriving at Prospect, I began to receive e-mails and phone calls from Tappy Gonzales. Tappy Gonzales wants to be paid $600. He contends he took apart a bus to provide an estimate for the cost of repairing it. He refers to this bus as the “blue bus.” Where is this blue bus? Is the bus blue or is it a Bluebird brand bus? Is there any paperwork authorizing Tappy Gonzales to work on this bus? Business Manager Lynne and I go through the receipts and I ask staff what they recall. While there are some receipts, we find nothing referring to work on the “blue bus.” Someone remembers that Tappy did some work for Mel and hadn’t been properly compensated so Mel told Tappy to add $100 to every bill until they were even. Someone else remembers the blue bus deal - Tappy said it was not worth it to repair the bus so he and Mel agreed he could keep the blue bus for parts in lieu of payment for his time evaluating the bus. I am spending too many hours investigating the black hole of the blue bus. I write Mr. Gonzales and thank him for his work in the past and indicate I do not believe he is owed any money by my school.

Bus Principal

I become aware of a power struggle that is compromising my transportation department. Shasta holds the title of Transportation Coordinator, but Ernie, my counselor, makes himself the de facto boss of the bus drivers when it suits him. Since he doesn’t have official responsibility, when anything goes wrong and he is unwilling or unable to handle it, he doesn’t. Shasta wants the authority, but she is reluctant to take it. Last year Mel, my predecessor, regularly overruled Shasta’s decisions in favor of Ernie’s. Shasta lets Ernie remove misbehaving children from the bus and address her drivers during her weekly transportation meetings.

But Shasta is unfailingly optimistic, bouncing around with genuine enthusiasm and cheer; she really loves her job. I meet with Shasta to empower her – to remind her that she, not Ernie, is the Coordinator of Transportation.

Shasta feels her new power and is pleased with her first mission even though it will be tough: shortening the bus routes. The bus routes are currently over three hours long. One route starts at 4:30 a.m. The students are on the bus so long they have to go to the bathroom before arriving at school. Bus drivers routinely have to stop at convenience stores where the children don’t limit themselves to going to the bathroom, they also buy or steal cigarettes, candy, gum and soda. Shasta and I set up a meeting with Chad, a routing expert from the public school, to determine the fewest number of routes we can run and still keep the length under two hours.

Chad is wonderful. He goes out of his way to help us even when there is no gain to him and no one pressuring him to do so. Chad spends hours with Shasta. Together Chad and Shasta determine that the answer is five, so five routes are drawn in marker on a laminated 8’x12’ map. I authorize Shasta to hire more drivers. She tells me the disparity between what Prospect pays drivers and what the public school pays is only part of the problem, the drivers want benefits. I promise to bring this up in the next Ebencorp budget meeting in Tampa. Then I go meet with Henry, my public school liaison, who delivers great news: he thinks he can arrange for us to lease public school busses for $1 per bus per year. I sleep a little better knowing this.