❝


Busing is the key to access.❞ — Dr. Elizabeth Molina Morgan


“It was her initial vision to be able to provide access to high


school students not for school choice but to attend any magnet programs, signature programs or international baccalaureate pro- grams,” Scotto said recently. “It required quite a number of hours to put together, but it’s been 100 percent successful since day one.” For Morgan, transportation services are just as important


as what goes on in the classrooms at the district’s 47 schools, including the new Barbara Engram School for the Arts that is served by the school bus hub. She’s an administrator who “gets it” when it comes to school busing, one of the reasons she was named the 2010 National Superintendent of the Year at the Na- tional Conference on Education in mid-February. When many school districts nationwide are seeing their trans-


portation services reduced or eliminated altogether, Scotto has seen no corners cut in Washington County’s operations. In fact, transportation is expanding, and Scotto reported that all school buses set to be retired will be replaced as scheduled. It helps that the district has one of if not the lowest per pupil costs in the state, $481 during fiscal year 2008. Washington County also recently revamped its pre-service


training to add the perspective of a day in the life of a school bus driver. Te focus is to imbed the decision-making skills that, as Scotto said, “make drivers believe that what they do every day really matters in how a child will arrive at school and learn.” Morgan is adamant that the bus ride and the interaction of


the bus driver with the student has an effect on learning and pro- viding educational equality by providing access to programs, the driving force behind the creation of Washington County’s mag- net schools, one in which a student can attend a school some 40 miles away from their home. “Busing is the key to access, the key to specialized programs


such as a technical high school,” she explained. “Now kids are coming from all parts of the county, most of which is a very ru- ral, mountainous area. Transportation also changes the culture of a school district. We’re a very Appalachian school district, and kids often don’t have the opportunity to travel to other parts of the county. Buses provide field trips, buses provide opportuni- ties to cultural arts. We’re meeting needs of the kids and giving them opportunities.” And the district’s 295 school bus drivers play a vital role for the


more than 19,000 students who are eligible for transportation. In fact, they can make or break a child’s day. “Te way you talk to the student, the way you show empathy


when they have a situation when they get on the bus,” added Mor- gan, who makes a point of addressing all Montgomery County bus drivers at least once a year. “Te bus drivers are extremely im- portant, other than the safety issues that we’re all tuned into, for knowing and understanding the children and having empathy for them. It’s very hard to have choice without transportation.” Her outlook is one that has been cultivated by a long track


record of working with transportation stakeholders, such as during her days spent at Montgomery County Public Schools. It was the mid-1980s when she was a school principal and met John Matthews, at the time a transportation area supervisor who would go on to become the district’s transportation direc- tor. Montgomery County was opening six new schools a year to keep up with the tremendous suburban growth extending from the Washington, D.C., area. Matthews said Morgan proved to be a strong ally for the transportation plans implemented to bus students to the schools. “Often times, school principals, they kind of look at transpor-


tation as a necessary evil rather than as a partner or an element of their success,” said Matthews. “Te principals who are successful, and Betty was certainly one of those principals, they’re the ones who grasp the idea that the person who is the public relations arm for the school in the field is the school bus driver. Betty was able to keep that perspective and keep strong the relationship between her and her bus operators and the people who inter- acted with the community on the behalf of the school. You could walk into her office at any time and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got to talk to you.’ She was always there and available for you to do that.” “The reason why we select a superintendent of the year is


to hold that person up as a model for how a system leader can effectively and efficiently run a successful school system, and that exactly is what Betty does,” said Dan Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, the 15,000-member strong organization that recognized Morgan in February at the National Conference on Education in Phoenix. Domenech, a former superintendent of Fairfax Public Schools


in Virginia who himself maintained a close working relationship with support staff, said communication is key. He described Mor- gan as exactly the kind of superintendent that a district — and transportation — needs, someone who will foster a supportive working relationship based on open communication that feeds the drive toward the ultimate goal: educating the entire student. To achieve this, a superintendent must build a team of key


personnel who will keep him or her informed at all times of everything that is going on, because the superintendent is the person the superintendent who will be asked the tough ques- tions by the board, the media and parents. “At the same time, you have to create the system that allows


that to happen, because the superintendent who puts up a wall between himself or herself and other folks that work for the system is not going to be able to get that information or that information will be filtered through so many different layers that, by the time it gets to the individual, it won’t even resemble the facts,” Domenech added. “It’s a degree of supervision that allows the super to have direct contact with what is happening at the ground level and have that info unfiltered and real-time.” ■


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