by Paul Pakusch
Prior to being a school bus driver, I spent nearly 39 years in the broadcasting business. I started in radio at age 14 and progressed to working in the control room of a TV station, a job which lasted 32 years. I had earned a BA in Communications, and later on earned a AAS in Accounting. Along the way, I also earned a private pilot's license and dabbled in a few side business ventures.
In September, 2014, my position at the TV station was eliminated. I quickly put the broadcasting business behind me and moved on. Over the next few months, per union contract, I was recalled three times to the TV station but turned them all down.
Within a few weeks after being layed off, I decided to try school bus driving. My wife was a teacher and the idea of us having vacations off together was appealing. That was the initial attraction. But once I got into driving, I discovered I truly enjoyed the job and kept it for that reason. Summers off became just a perk of the job.
There is a national shortage of school bus drivers. I literally could pick whichever school district I wanted to work for. I applied to four of them in my area and was called by all four for interviews. I chose the district I lived in, which was my first choice anyways because it was a convenient commute for me.
I had to take a written test for my learner's permit. In New York State, I needed the CDL, the passenger bus, and the school bus endorsements to my license. Once I passed those written tests, the road training began.
I was assigned a trainer to teach me how to drive a school bus. You begin with the "pre-trip" and "post-trip" inspections of the bus, which is a required routine for every single bus run. The inside check consists of such things as checking all the buttons and switches around the dashboard, the interior lights, all the seat cushions and seat backs, the emergency doors, hatches and emergency windows. The outside check consists of checking such things as all the exterior lights, reflectors, the tires and every single nut and bolt on them, all the windows for cracks, rubber seals around door windows, and more.
People have asked me if it's hard to drive a bus. In my opinion, once you get used to the size of it, it's not a big deal. I am as comfortable driving a school bus as I am my own personal vehicle. You just have to be aware that you're taking up a lot more space, especially when going around corners. If you follow the established procedures, you should have no problem driving a bus. You also have to learn how to use the air brake system. Just about all school buses use automatic transmission these days.
I did learn quickly that I needed to get rid of a lot of bad driving habits. Most drivers quite frankly suck. The attitude of learning to drive as a teenager is to get your written test out of the way, learn to pass the road test, and then quickly adapt to all the bad habits you see everyone else doing. People are very impatient, which is what causes accidents. People speed up to get through yellow lights before they turn red; CDL drivers are taught to slow down for "stale green" lights and be ready to stop when the light turns yellow. People use road shoulders as turning lanes, or otherwise misuse turning lanes, especially the center lane. People drive either too fast or too slow in the left lane of a multi-lane highway. People treat stop signs and right-on-reds as a yield sign, often hardly even slowing down. People don't use turn signals properly, or don't use them at all. People don't use hazard lights when they stop on the shoulder of the road. People don't keep both hands on the wheel. People text and/or use cell phones while driving; from high on my perch, it was very easy for me to see into people's cars and what they were doing. I'm guilty of a lot of these. Yup, it goes back to copying what everyone else was doing once I became a licensed driver, back in the day. In training to drive a school bus, I found I needed to clean up my act. Now I use my better driving habits in my personal vehicle as well as on the bus.
Once my trainer got me comfortable with driving a school bus, we spent a lot of time driving around the various neighborhoods of the school district. I needed to see where all the cul de sacs and dead end streets were. I needed to know the established procedures for turning the bus around in those areas. We did practice runs so I could learn how to stay on schedule and find houses without driving past them and missing my stop. The real challenge is finding houses on dark mornings when the house numbers are not lit up. Hardly anyone thinks of lighting their house numbers. Good luck when you need an ambulance. And we're not allowed to use GPS.
When I got my own route, I got up early on a Sunday morning, at 0-dark-thirty, to drive the route and look for clues or landmarks to help me find certain houses in the dark. It might be a certain mailbox by the road with reflectors on it. I might count driveways from an intersection or a light pole. It might be a fire hydrant; I named it the "fire hydrant route" because so many of my stops were either just before or after a fire hydrant. It might be a driveway just before or after a speed limit or duck crossing sign. Landmarks of any kind that can be seen in the dark are a big help. I wrote them all down in my route book so that a substitute driver could use the same landmarks if I wasn't there.
The day of my road test, my trainer and I showed up at Emerson & Glide in a school bus. Of course, I was just a bucket of nerves. I made a few mistakes on my test but passed. Whew! Then I did my initial driving of passengers with other drivers watching me.
My first solo driving experience was to take the high school hockey team to an ice rink. I was happy to have the coach on board to keep the boys in line. I chuckled over hearing some of them talk about girls. Yep, back in high school!
Then one morning I was assigned to pick up an elementary girls' swim team from the high school and bring them back to their elementary school. So the girls got on, and I looked around for an adult. Finally I said to them, "Do you have a teacher riding with you?" They said no. I looked back at the school building and saw an adult waving me on. "Holy crap!" I thought. "I'm ALONE in a bus with a bunch of elementary school kids!" So, awkwardly I drove them to their school and everything went fine.
I continued driving some more sub runs and then was told I'd be filling in on a regular run for a driver who was going on medical leave. He ended up not coming back, so that run became mine for the rest of the year.
It's worth noting that my initial driving was in January and February of 2015, one of the coldest and snowiest winters on record in Rochester. This brand new bus driver was cutting his teeth while plunging through snow drifts in nearly-zero visibility! Don't I deserve some kind of an award for that? :-) Anyways, once I got used to it, I was fine. I much prefer driving a school bus through a blizzard than my own personal vehicle.
In March of 2015, I had my first bus emergency. While driving middle-schoolers home, I suddenly saw some small amounts of smoke coming from my engine. I pulled up to my next stop, which was only about 500 feet away, and told the kids we needed to evacuate. They did wonderfully! Everyone was off the bus in about 20 seconds, and they followed my instructions to stay together as a group. I reported the situation to the dispatcher and they called 911. Once the engine was checked, it turned out to be coolant leaking onto a hot part below it. The whole thing was surreal; when I saw the smoke, I was in denial, thinking, "This can't really be happening." Then I tried to wish the smoke away, but that doesn't work. I didn't know what the cause was, so I took the safest course of action.
A lot of people tell me they don't know how I can stand having all those kids on the bus. To be honest, I was ok with it at first. I felt the kids really aren't that bad, overall. I'd have a few problem children that I dealt with individually. Kids are a bundle of energy. It's not natural for them to be sitting still for hours at a time. So, I did the best I could at making sure they were in their seats and safe. Many of them got loud; I dealt with it. For most, they are only on the bus for about 15-20 minutes. I probably spent more time alone in my bus than I do with kids in it.
Over time, it started getting to me. I was reaching my saturation point with certain kids who kept acting up and getting other kids riled up. A pet peeve of mine is school districts' policies of putting three kids in a seat. I think the limit should be two to a seat, even for little kids. They are restless and get on each other's nerves. They elbow, poke and push each other. They've got big backpacks, and in colder weather, they're wearing thick winter outfits. I think a lot of behavior problems would go away if districts would limit bus loads to no more than two passengers per seat.
Everything about school buses is designed around safety. In New York State, riding a school bus is statistically the safest form of transportation. Students are at far more risk of injury if they drive or are driven to school in a car. I know people get annoyed at being stuck behind a school bus in traffic, or at having to stop for a bus's red lights, but you have to remember that kids are unpredictable. Yes, they are taught how to cross a road in front of a bus and board or unload, but if they drop something or a sheet of paper starts blowing across a road, they're going to be impulsive and start chasing after it.
Cars going through a bus's red lights are a real problem. It happens to every single one of us drivers. I've had as many as five cars go through my reds at a single stop. Quite frankly, I don't think the drivers were even aware of what they did. I could see their faces and they appeared to have "tunnel-vision;" they were driving on the opposite side of the road, looking straight ahead, and seemed oblivious to what was around them. That's a dangerous practice even without a school bus in the environment; every driver should always be looking around, no matter where they are.
The worst busting a bus's red light situation I've seen is when a car tries to pass a stopped school bus on the right shoulder, by the door where kids are getting on or off. Yes, it does happen! Even in my own school district! If you search Youtube, you can find some horrible examples of this. I always checked my right mirror for cars that might be attempting to do this, and I reminded kids at those stops to watch for traffic before getting off.
A question I often get from people is whether they are required to stop for a school bus in the opposite direction on a divided highway. In New York State, the answer is yes, you need to stop. It's the law. Why? Remember what I said about an impulsive child chasing a paper across the road.
I hated holding up traffic and I'm sure many other bus drivers don't like it either. The red lights don't come on until I open the door; I made sure no one was racing down the road before I opened the door. If they were, I waited until they passed and then opened the door. I'm not a cop, so I wasn't out to "get" anyone. I'd write a license number down if I could see it and do it without jeopardizing the safety of kids. But my primary responsibility was to make sure the kids got on and off the bus safely. I was, however, very happy if I knew there was a cop following my bus! Most people are nervous with a cop behind them, but I know I'm following all the road rules, so I have nothing to worry about; then I'm happy I've got someone watching out for idiots who pass a school bus's red lights.
So, what about those seat belts? Well, yes, all school buses in New York State are required to have seat belts available for all the students. They are not required to wear them unless it's a part of their IEP. The high, cushioned seat backs are supposed to prevent injury if a bus comes to a quick stop.
The reason a lot of bus drivers are against the required use of seat belts is because a lot of valuable time would be lost if you needed to evacuate the bus quickly. A bus with an engine fire is going to fill up with smoke quickly (again, search Youtube for some examples of how quickly this happens). My bus can carry over 60 kids at once. If I had 60 kids who were all wearing seat belts, imagine the confusion of a smoky bus, where 3/4 of the kids were able to get their seat belts off and get off the bus. Meanwhile, they are in a panic, climbing over other kids who are struggling to get their belts off. Chaos ensues in the smoky bus as kids head in different directions for the nearest exit, and I'm trying to get through with a seat belt cutter to get the remaining 15 kids out of their seat belts. How much time has passed before I'm able to get to them all? Two minutes? Three minutes? Maybe by then I'm either forced to get off the bus myself, or maybe I've passed out from smoke inhalation. Yet there might still be some kids on the bus, stuck in their seat belts. Remember what I said earlier: When I had an actual bus emergency last year, my un-seat belted middle schoolers were all off the bus in about 20 seconds.
What about possible injuries in a collision, when the kids are not wearing seat belts? Yes, there are horrible examples of fatal school bus collisions, but in the vast majority of them, the kids are not going to be injured. The padded seat backs will cushion the blow if they hit their heads. If a bus is rear-ended, chances are there won't be anyone in the back seat because we try to keep the back seats unoccupied. If the bus is hit on the side, the impact point will likely be below where they are sitting.
I really enjoyed the job. I enjoy the feel of driving a big vehicle and I enjoy sitting up high in traffic so I can see everything. I enjoy watching the sun rise. I enjoy being out with the windows open on nice days. I enjoy seeing the kids on a regular basis. I especially appreciate the kids who seem to like me. I got a bunch of really nice cards on my elementary school's bus driver appreciation day. I was happily surprised when I saw how many of them wrote such things as "I love you," and "you're nice," and "thank you for keeping me safe."
I'm not alone in this being a major career change. Other bus drivers I've met include drivers from other transportation jobs, people layed off from other jobs, retired cops, retired Kodak workers or factory jobs, business owners, empty nest mothers, volunteer firefighters, a church pastor, transfers from other school jobs, parents or grandparents of students in the district, and many other walks of life. Everyone has their own reason for choosing this line of work, but we all pride ourselves on the safe transportation of students to and from school every day.
Although I had a lot of positive things to say about being a school bus driver, after 3 years I decided it was time to move on. The main source of frustration for me is that I get the feeling taxpayers are expecting too much of school bus drivers. There is a tremendous amount of responsibility and the salary over the course of a year is not very much. A lot of emphasis is placed by the New York State DMV and the federal DOT about driver distraction. But they seem to forget that having 50 screaming kids in the back of the bus is a bigger distraction than anything else. If I had it my way, every single bus would have a monitor on it so the driver can pay attention to driving.
Subsequent entries to my autobiography series will be posted every Thursday morning until further notice. If you wish to subscribe to notifications of my posts, please enter your e-mail address in the form at the right, under "Follow by e-mail." If you wish to view previous blog posts of my autobiography, please click on the link under "blog categories" at the top right, "autobiography."
Nice! Very good article of being a bus driver.
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