SILK HOPE — It’s quarter til 3 p.m., which is when Beverly Fox’s day starts.
Kind of. She’s been up since 5 a.m., preparing for and doing one job, serving as an instructional assistant in kindergarten and first grade classes at Silk Hope School. In the afternoon, however, she has a different responsibility.
She checks lights, opens front and back doors, makes sure stop signs activate properly, assuring there’s no leaks in tires. She then pulls the school bus around to the front of the school to wait for the kids.
The buzzer sounds around 3 p.m. and students begin pouring out of the front door of Silk Hope School. Kids from kindergarten to eighth grade hop onto Fox’s bus, No. 72. She greets them and checks off their names from her list.
Fox is one of Chatham County Schools’ bus drivers, district staff which serve as more than a shuttle service. To them, and to the students who ride with them, they’re much more.
An integral part
Bus drivers — like teachers, janitors, administrators and office workers — are a key part of the educational ecosystem, according to Joel Caviness, CCS’ transportation director.
“If it wasn’t for the yellow buses, almost half the students wouldn’t be able to get to school each day,” he said. “It’s very important for our drives to be able to run those routes.”
According to the American School Bus Council, more than 26 million students ride buses every year, more than half of all the children who attend school. According to the N.C. Department of Public Instruction, more than 14,000 buses operate daily on routes across the state, driving an average of 794,950 children a day and a total of 181,285,181 miles a year.
In Chatham County, 3,783 students (nearly 44 percent of the district’s student population) ride one of the district’s 95 buses daily. Using a formula from the ASBC, the district estimates that students riding the bus saves Chatham residents about $682,115 a year.
Last week, the state celebrated School Bus Driver Appreciation Week, with events around the state, as part of the “Love the Bus” initiative, started by the ASBC in 2007. In a press release commemorating the week, Kevin Harrison, transportation services section chief with N.C. DPI, said drivers are “entrusted with a great responsibility: to safely transport our children to and from school each day.”
“To do this, they must drive their students, watch out for them, listen to them and teach them,” Harrison said. “We ask so much of bus drivers every day. I hope that all students, parents and staff will take a moment to express their appreciation for the many things their bus drivers do.”
‘Not the easiest job’
Seven hours before Fox took off on her route, she and Joanne Tyson sat in Silk Hope School’s media center. Above the noise of students checking out books, they talked about their route.
Tyson and Fox share Bus No. 72. Tyson drives in the morning, Fox in the afternoon. Fresh off her morning route, Tyson said it was “perfect.”
“Can’t complain, no complaints,” she added.
Tyson and Fox said they work to make sure their bus doesn’t fall into the stereotype of a school bus. They don’t want kids handing out warm gummy bears and throwing paper airplanes and hanging their heads out the window.
Keeping discipline on the bus is the hardest part to Tyson.
“I think safety, trying to keep them safe,” she said. “Driving a bus is not the easiest job, especially if you have a bus where the kids don’t behave. Luckily, we have good kids.”
Fox said there’s a bit of inanity in driving a bus. As an instructional assistant, she has one of two pairs of hands and two pairs of eyes during the school day that help keep track of kids. As a bus driver, there’s one pair of hands and one pair of eyes, and those hands need to be on the wheel and those eyes on the road.
“Who in their right mind would turn their back on 40 children?” she said. “Really, you need discipline on the bus, control, in order for you to keep control and keep your eyes on the mirror and on the road. It’s easy if someone’s distracting you to get your mind off the road.”
How do they keep things under control? There are assigned seats that can be changed if any issues come up. At the beginning of each year, there are guidelines set up for bus riders. If one child acts out too much, there’s always the option of separating them from their friends and bringing them to the front.
Caviness, who has led the transportation department since 2008 and supervises drivers, said setting guidelines is critical to a consistently good route.
“I see a lot of drivers struggle when they start out,” he said. “They let the kids run over them. Once you set those guidelines in the beginning, they don’t have any trouble.”
Riding the route
Fox’s route in the afternoons — almost identical to Tyson’s in the morning — runs about an hour and 15 minutes, covering a lot of rural ground. Some of the roads are narrow and difficult to navigate.
But it’s natural to Fox. Not only has she driven buses since 1996, with an eight-year break at one point, she went to Silk Hope, as did her children. One of her grandchildren rides her route. She drives by her grandparents’ old house, the watering hole where she swam growing up.
“I know the people, I know the routes, I know the roads,” Fox said. “I love it.”
Caviness said the district has “a great bunch of drivers,” but admitted that it’s difficult to recruit them.
“That’s one of the reasons we have to require EC [exceptional children] assistants, child nutrition workers (and more) to secure a CDL license to be able to drive a bus,” he said. “We’ve got bus drivers that get up at 5 o’clock in the morning, then go to school and work as a TA [teacher’s assistant] or in the cafeteria, then go on the route. They’ve got a very hard job.”
Both Tyson and Fox began their careers in the district driving buses, then became teachers’ assistants later. Tyson said she didn’t have to drive, but she likes to.
“You never know what that child is facing at home,” she said. “To see the bus driver first, I think it makes them feel good, comfortable. I think they trust us.”
About halfway through Friday’s route, Fox slows down the bus, activates the stop signs on the sides and waits for a trio of kids to walk to the front. One stops and gives Fox a hug.
For her, it’s part of what makes driving a bus great.
“I’ve had a really good route,” she said. “I’ve had good kids. We have the best bus out of four (at Silk Hope).”
Tyson quickly adds, “Probably out of the county.”