Shawnee Mission school bus driver was right to turn that bus of rowdy students around

Recently in The Star’s 913 newsmagazine, commentator Richard Espinoza wrote about an experience his son and some friends had on their school’s late bus. The group of teenage boys got rowdy on the way home from an after-school club meeting, and the driver followed through on her threat of consequences: She turned the bus around and took the students back to the Shawnee Mission district school, where they had arrange for their own rides home.

This chain of events rang a bell with me, since I am also a bus driver — quite possibly a friend of the driver mentioned in the story.

While I know the column was not intended as criticism of school bus drivers in general, I am worried about the effect this narrative might have on student behavior on school buses.

Bored students pulling stunts on the bus because they have been cooped up all day might seem to excuse frivolous behavior to some people, but anything that takes the driver’s attention away from his or her driving can quickly turn into a very serious matter, possibly involving pedestrians or cars interacting with a 35-foot-long, 10-ton school bus.

Espinoza calling the students “loosely supervised” needs some clarification. Most drivers of large buses do not have anyone riding shotgun with them. They are solely responsible for their students’ welfare, as well as driving the bus. A question for you: How much time should a school bus driver spend looking back at his students rather than looking at where he is going? We all try to spend most of our time looking at the road rather than “loosely supervising” our passengers.

There is a natural progression of steps taken when a driver is faced with increasingly distracting passenger behavior. Drivers warn students to “sit down and shut up” when their voices include screaming, yelling and other noises. The next step would be to pull the bus over to the side of the road and try to get students settled down. After doing this several times without success, the driver will contact his dispatcher on the bus radio, and at this point it may be decided either to return to school or to sit tight, depending on where assistance can be more easily sent to the bus.

In any case, I sincerely doubt that the driver in this case “snapped” before deciding with the dispatcher to return to school. It seems to me to be a logical disciplinary progression.

There is an implicit social contract that most people observe: obey the rules or face the consequences. In this case, not obeying the rules might include a student having to walk home from school for a week or two. We are told that riding the late bus is a privilege, not a right.

One more thought: Educating our children properly is a team effort. This team has to include teachers, counselors, coaches, parents, cafeteria workers, librarians and even bus drivers. We must support each other to make this system work.

Gene Tesson has driven school buses in the Shawnee Mission School District for 20 years. He holds a bachelor of science degree in journalism from the University of Kansas and is a retired manager from Southwestern Bell Telephone Company.