School bus irony. When you yell at the parent louder than the student.

Writing a personal blog is a two-edged sword. Although it does allow a person to display their quirkiness and a funny view of the world, it can also get, well, personal. And personal is not always entertaining. So, there is my caveat. This post is more for me than you. Choose wisely before you continue.

I unloaded on a parent at a bus stop the other day. I really laid into them for their actions. I was so angry and scared at the same time I am not sure exactly what I said. Of course, if they call in a complaint, I’m sure the school admin will pull my video chip. Then the audio will be transcribed for me, and I’ll know exactly what I said. Most likely there will be some kind of formal document I’m gonna have to sign.

As a school bus driver, student shootings like the one most recently in Texas resonate a little more. Students are part of my daily work life. The thought of 20 of them just not being there the next day is truly horrific. The thought of the damage done to families, and ultimately entire communities is unfathomable. That was probably the root of my anger when I dealt with this parent.

As a driver of a public school bus my number one concern at all times is the safety of my students. Not to just keep them from beating the crap out of each other while ON the bus but being aware of all of the real dangers when loading and unloading. You have to understand, most of my stops are right in the middle of busy streets and intersections where there is a LOT of traffic in motion. I have long since concluded that everyone who has a driver’s license that did not get 100% on the written test, it was because they failed all of the school bus questions.

So with safety on my mind at all times, I am amazed there has not been a large-scale active shooter event on a public school bus. Let’s look at the factors.

A school bus has a very strict schedule. You know exactly where it will be and at what time every day. You can also determine the number of students that will be on board at any given point of its route.

School buses have no door locks. Now some of the newer ones have an interlock system. Commonly called vandal locks. They are engaged when a bus is being parked at things like a sporting event and you don’t want people going inside and painting the other team’s name on the seats. But the bus will not start or run when the locks are on. So for any bus doing its route, any all doors can be opened at any time (for emergency evacuations).

Emergency doors open with a simple quarter-turn handle. And the split-fold entry door commonly runs off of air, which is set to 35 to 40 pounds. You can pull them apart with your hands if needed. After all, you don’t want to accidentally chop a kid in half when they’re getting on or off.

If an active shooter gained access to the inside of a school bus, it becomes a compact shooting gallery. There is a single long 30′ hallway with seats on either side. Entering at the front of the bus, they have a commanding view of the rear emergency door, the side door, and they would be physically blocking the main entry service door

In such a situation, one of two things would happen to the students. One, they would all panic and go towards the exit door farthest away from the shooter. Or two, they would cover down behind the seat back and hide. With the former, the shooter would have an open acquisition of targets trapped in the narrow hallway. With the latter, they would have stationary targets in defensive positions.

School bus seats are not constructed with ballistics in mind. The backs are tube frames with a thin metal spacer just covered with vinyl. The bottoms are a little thicker with some cushioning. The former would be defeated effectively by all handgun calibers 9mm and up. For long guns, pretty much any centerfire cartridge would pass thru a seat back effortlessly. Any unanticipated deflection would aid in damaging multiple targets. A generic AR-15 platform with some soft modifications could do tremendous physical damage in this environment very quickly.

As far as threats go, they would fall under internal or external. Internal would obviously be a student.

Any good bus driver knows that student management is at least 70% of the job. Sure, it takes some skill and adjustment to get used to driving a 15-ton big yellow brick, but you get the hang of it after putting a hundred hours in the seat and a thousand miles on the road. Once experience and muscle memory start to kick in, it is all about knowing your students. I have found that learning student names and greeting them and trying to engage them (even just a little bit) goes a long way to having a safe, controlled ride.

When you see and interact and talk to these kids during a 20-minute ride twice a day, you get to know them. You get to know their moods. You get to know when things are going well for them on any given day, or things are going really bad. And that is how you stop problems before they happen. Or just help out a student having a difficult time with something.

Case in point, a couple of months back a driver went on the radio saying she had a student that was unsettled and crying and was not herself. She had dispatch call the parent to let them know the student was upset, dropped off, and home alone. We found out later the mother called the school district back and thanked them profusely. Her daughter had her first time of the month and was very distraught. She was having a horrible, horrible day. And thanks to the attention of one driver, a mother was able to be there to help her thru it.

As far as external threats, that would be a person boarding the bus that’s not a student. This is where drivers have to be aware of the environment, especially around bus stops. You learn who should be standing there and who shouldn’t. And take note if there’s anybody suspicious carrying anything heavy and bulky, etc. etc. A driver may even need to blow past the stop if it appears too sketchy and call it in.

This is by far would be the worst-case scenario. A person entering a bus planning to harm could easily defeat the driver. After all, drivers are seated, buckled down, and have limited mobility to defend. They are in the direct line of fire when the doors open. With the driver removed, the aggressor could easily take the command position at the front of the bus with the advantages previously described.

So, try and imagine all of this in the back of my mind when I had this incident at a bus stop the other day. This stop is a terrible spot to drop kids. It’s right in the middle of a 3-block stretch that is wall-to-wall apartments on each side. The streets are lined with beat-up cars, abandoned motor homes, short sight lines, and lots of places for people to pop out of. Plus, when you back up the traffic here with a flashing stop paddle, everyone gets tries to run it. Those who don’t make it keep a foot on the gas waiting for the sign to drop. A lot of things to keep an eye on. Especially when you have students crossing that street.

It was during off-boarding at this stop that something caught my eye. The cross-over mirrors are those convex ones that hang off the front bumper. They allow you to see things otherwise hidden by the angle of the hood. Especially the crossing arm, which makes sure the students don’t cross in the blind spot of the bus where you could run them over. It was in this mirror I saw something. Even though a little distorted, there was a person at my front fender that I could not physically see. They were crouched there. They were purposely staying out of sight.

I’ve got students exiting the bus, crossing the street, parents everywhere, dogs, cats, and long lines of traffic stopped. And this person. I want to tap the horn to scare them away from the front of the bus and see who they are, but I don’t want to scare the kids in the oncoming traffic. While I’m trying to understand this and take it all in, I see this person climb underneath the stop bar up as close to the bumper as they can get. I cannot physically see them. They are crouching and crawling staying out of my sight lines on purpose.

A few seconds later they were around the bumper, and up tight against the right fender. Now just a few feet from the service door, where the last of my students were exiting the bus.

My hand was reaching for the radio. I sat there tensely. Were my students safe across the street? How many students are still on board? Is there anything I can weaponize?

Then suddenly this person showed themselves and jumped out in front of the door. She grabbed a kindergartener. Screamed ‘Boo’ and tickled.

I lost it. This 30ish grown-ass irresponsible “mother” somehow got it in her head it would be fun to creep around the front of an idling school bus out of sight to scare her daughter and possibly make her run into active traffic. I went from being scared to being livid.

She tried to walk away, and I called her back. I didn’t care how long I tied up this street. I’m not entirely sure what I said. I only remember a very loud and assertive bus driver’s voice coming from my mouth that I had never heard before. I remember saying something about safety, responsibility, stupidity, and some possible insults. Maybe even a couple of F-bombs tying everything. I have no idea. I was speaking in tongues. This was not a teaching moment. This was not winning the hearts and minds. This was about an incredibly stupid person doing an incredibly stupid thing not thinking about the safety of their child or any other child I was charged with getting home.

As I chewed her out, she stood staring at me. Just standing on the street at the front of the door of the bus. Holding her kid’s hand. At the end of my educational and most likely profane safety rant, she just smiled with vacant eyes. Said “Thank you very much sir” in a very thick accent I did not recognize. She began speaking to her child in a foreign language, as two more of her preschool kids came running across traffic to join her. I had to keep the stop paddle out for all of them to casually stroll back over to the other side of the street; to prevent the entire family from getting run over. At this moment I realized the woman did not speak any English and didn’t understand a single word I said.

And so my friends, that is how in a span of 30 seconds I went from physical fear of the safety of my students, to uncontrollable anger and disbelief of a poor parent, to ultimately ending in the depths of the most frustrating communication experience I have ever known. I was so amazingly numb as I finished the route and put the bus to bed at night. Things could have turned out so much worse. An emotional tap-out kind of day.

So next time you think of a school bus driver as just a fat lazy lower social-economical slob that couldn’t find a real job, just take a moment. Breathe. Think. Even the worst ones I know would do more for the safety of their students than obviously some parents for their own children.