SPECIAL REPORT Filtering the Bad from the Good
Screening Process for School Bus Drivers Uncertain at Best By Art Gissendaner
In February, many school districts celebrated
the overwhelming majority of bus drivers as heroes during “Love the Bus” month. But, more than a few districts also lamented aberrations. Administrator declarations and student
Valentine’s Day cards thanking bus drivers for keeping students safe were personified by Bobbie Tompson, a first-year bus driver in the Weatherford (Texas) Independent School District, who evacuated 49 students from her bus after it was rear-ended by an SUV and she detected smoke. Tompson, a modest, single parent who drives for Durham School Servic- es, credited her training and maternal instinct for her actions: “I was thinking like a mom, too. I’m just glad I was able to do the right thing.” But elsewhere, Valley Bus Services employee
Steven Sauer was arrested and fired for DUI af- ter driving his school bus into a snowbank in the West Fargo (N.D.) School District. No children were on board. Illinois Central School Bus Com- pany fired Joseph Moore after he was charged with two counts of DUI and one count of negli- gent driving. No children were on his bus, either. Betty Burden was recently convicted of aggra- vated DUI while transporting students on a field trip for the Mount Prospect (Ill.) School District. In December, Jennifer Lynne Moore received
a DUI while transporting students on a field trip for Coloma Community Schools in Michigan. She was previously convicted of a DUI in Geor- gia while driving her own vehicle. Officials in the Olympia (Wash.) School District were sent reel- ing after bus driver Gary Shafer was arrested on two counts of child molestation involving two 6-year-old girls. Shafer resigned. Durham’s Tompson and others like her are
the norm. But the other rare cases leave school officials wondering if school bus drivers are like a box of chocolates. Are there ways to predict what they’re getting? Te answer depends on who’s looking through the microscope. Experts say human resources should be involved during the hiring process and kept in the loop at all times. “Tat should be the case for all employees,
whether they have student contact or not,” says Mark Hinson, chief human resource officer for
Adams 12 Five Star Schools in Tornton, Colo. “Human resources is immediately in play here with the application process. We go beyond employment history by including an applicant oath. (Applicants) must indicate previous con- victions, pending charges and arrests.” Human resources advertises jobs,
reviews
applications and initiates employment history and criminal background checks when a job is offered. It also provides guidance on disciplin- ary and legal issues. Fingerprint-based criminal history checks are conducted by the state po- lice and the FBI. Districts that use fingerprint cards must wait up to six weeks for results. Oth- ers that use digital fingerprinting get results in two weeks or less. Most school districts don’t allow applicants to drive until they’ve been cleared, while some allow supervised training. “If a conviction shows up in a background
check, the transportation supervisor and hu- man resources get together to discuss the nature of the offense and decide what action to take to remedy the situation,” says Olym- pia School District spokesman Peter Rex. “In almost every case, if a criminal conviction is found in their background, they are not hired by the district. Nothing showed up in (Gary) Shafer’s background, and to our knowledge nothing has showed up since his arrest.” Te collateral damage from these transgres-
sions can have financial implications. Rex said the family of one of the girls intends to sue the district. Temple (Texas) ISD driver Richard Trevino was
convicted and sentenced to 40 years in 2009 for im- proper contact with a 13-year-old girl, apparently after passing a screening process that specifically calls for national criminal history checks of school bus drivers. Last November, an on-board camera nabbed Richard Evans for sex acts with a girl young- er than 10 years old while driving a bus for the Lodi (Calif.) Unified School District. California law does not specify school bus drivers in its requirement for sex-offender background checks. “It’s a question of awareness,” said Det. Brian
Fry of the Stockton Police Department, which is investigating the Evans case. “Te two places you want to know your child is safe is at school and
24 School Transportation News Magazine April 2011
on the bus on the way to school.” Illinois State Director of Pupil
Transportation Cinda Meneghetti states a subtle fact: “If they’re not caught, they do not have a record.” Illinois, like most states, requires random alcohol and drug test- ing, and bus drivers are required to notify their supervisors if they are arrested during their tenure. Meneghetti said Mount Pros- pect’s Burden, a 20-year veteran, likely was grandfathered in and excluded from testing. Finger- printing is required of everyone who deals with children. “It is a huge liability to allow
them to drive before that informa- tion comes back,” Meneghetti says. “We have pretty good records, but it is disconcerting when we have two (DUI) incidents in one year.” While some districts may not
trust background checks, (Steven) Sauer’s supervisors in Fargo, N.D., may no longer
trust their eyes.
Employing a widely-used prac- tice called “reasonable suspicion,” Sauer, who passed his pre-employ- ment drug and alcohol screen, was observed by co-workers and su- pervisors before boarding his bus. A radio check also failed to detect
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