BUSES: Driving us crazy

I’m writing to your paper on behalf of all the hardworking and very unappreciated school bus drivers. I know some, as my husband drives a school bus. And I have heard the funny stories, the sad stories and their major problems all yearlong and tenfold worse this time of year.

In the spring starts all the long trips. The trips to all the great functions that kids enjoy as they should. The bus drivers enjoy the trips as it’s a change of pace for them. They really enjoy the kids, or they would never take on the job of bus driver to begin with. But, most bus drivers quit doing the trips to take the tennis team to the next meet, or the football team to their games, or the track team to their different functions and worst of all “the STATE finals.”

Why do they quit? It’s a majority of the teachers and coaches who go along as the adult chaperones. They get on the buses expecting to tell the drivers how to drive and how to get where the teachers want them to go. Then when they have the driver filled in on what is expected of them, they kick back and talk and laugh and expect to be treated as special VIPs. They pay no attention to the kids as “it’s their free time.” The kids could run up and down the aisles, play grabby (or worse), hang out windows, blare music and do all kinds of dangerous things and the ADULT CHAPERONES (AKA — teachers and coaches) are totally not in tune.

If something bad should happen who gets fired? The school bus driver! Most of these chaperones think the rules don’t apply to them. What about the adults who are supposed to be supervising the students? What if all school bus drivers got too busy to drive the VIPs and their students to functions? How many students would go because parents couldn’t always drive them or afford to take them? Or maybe the teachers and coaches should go to bus driving school (it only takes a few months) and work to get a CDL driver’s license with the special additions that makes it OK to carry passengers and see how well they do.

If they paid the same attention to their driving as they do their students, no parent in their right mind would let their children do anything but go to classes. The kids would never have rides to games. The kids deserve better.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Press withheld the author’s name because of the writer’s concerns that her husband might be fired.