They are one of the first people students see in the morning and the last school employee they see in the afternoon.
School bus drivers are tasked with getting kids to school safely and on time every day. Drivers have to not only drive the bus, but also build relationships with students, make sure they are behaving on the bus and constantly keep their safety in mind.
“In my perspective, they have a very stressful and important job to set the tone for learning in the morning and be sure each child arrives to school and home safely,” Clark-Pleasant Superintendent Patrick Spray said.
The task of transporting the county’s more than 25,000 public school children to and from school daily falls to hundreds of bus drivers across the county. Their days start early, with a check each day to make sure their bus has no mechanical or safety problems. And some drivers pick up multiple loads of children everyday.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery
For some, the job turns into a lifelong career, and they end up behind the wheel of the bus for decades.
Making sure each of their bus routes has a driver is a key task for school districts every school year, and in past years some have faced a driver shortage, leading schools to advertise more and raise pay to try to attract new drivers to the job.
Greenwood schools are having a shortage this year, Superintendent Kent DeKoninck said.
But other school districts have found their hiring easier this year. Franklin schools are closer to being fully staffed than they have in the past four years, transportation director Doug Dickinson said.
A driver’s priority is keeping the kids safe, which is especially key when students are getting on and off the bus, Clark-Pleasant bus driver Chuck Billingsly said.
Making sure kids get on and off the bus safely can be difficult because he doesn’t know what other drivers will do, he said.
“I feel like everyone is in a hurry these days and they don’t pay attention to school buses,” Billingsly said.
Once on the road to school, drivers have to manage about 50 kids while also operating a vehicle, Dickinson said.
“This is difficult because you’re driving a bus,” he said. “Unlike in a classroom, you’re looking at them through a mirror.”
For Greenwood Community Schools bus driver Peggy Daeger, giving discipline to the kids on her bus is an instinct after driving for more than 30 years.
“You get to know the children, so I can look at them and say, ‘We’re not doing this on my bus.'” she said. “I give the mom look, everyone knows the mom look.”
Over his 46 years of driving, Billingsly has found that disciplining kids on the bus has gotten more difficult through the years.
“When I was a kid, when the bus driver looked at you in the mirror, you’d melt in your seat,” Billingsly said. “That doesn’t happen anymore.”
That’s why building a relationship with the kids is an important task, drivers said.
Daeger gets to know her kids by just talking to them, she said. She drives the essential skills students bus, and she has games, toys and books she knows her kids enjoy.
“There are things you learn just by talking to them,” Daeger said. “I can tell you exactly what my kids like.”
After driving the same route for years, Billingsly has gotten to know the families of the kids he drives.
“Some of those kids, I’ve had their parents,” he said.
But even after decades as a bus driver, Billingsly still gets apprehensive on the first day of school each year when he gets new kids.
“I’m driving the same route, but the kids are different,” Billingsly said.
