INDUSTRY CONNECTIONS


£From left: Obama cabinet members Anthony Foxx and Arne Duncan meet with Tucson Unified transportation staff during a visit of the district’s bus facility.


BACK TO SCHOOL


EDUCATION SECRETARY ARNE DUNCAN AND TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY ANTHONY FOXX RIDE THE SCHOOL BUS IN SOUTHERN ARIZONA, SPEAK ON ITS IMPORTANCE TO EDUCATION, SAFETY BENEFITS


WORDS AND PHOTOS BY HANNAH GABER S


tarting the day at 5 a.m. is par for the course if you work on or with school buses. On a sunny Sept. 11, National Rembrance Day, it was just another


day at the office for David Williams, a trans- portation supervisor with the Tucson (Ariz.) Unified School District. “Te cargo was a little different,” he said,


“but it’s just a normal day.” Joining the student riders were Education


Secretary Arne Duncan and Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, their entourage and several members of the media. Te officials stopped in Tucson as part of the U.S. Depart- ment of Education’s “Strong Start, Bright Future” back-to-school bus tour, and were joined by members of the American School Bus Council, which helped put on the event. Te day started at the TUSD transpor- tation hub, where Duncan and Foxx talked


with staff and shook hands with some of the people who literally keep the wheels turning. Running bit behind the scheduled 7:15 a.m. departure, the cabinet members, Secret Ser- vice, aides and press crowded onto the yellow bus to greet more and more excited — and sometimes mildly confused — kids board at each stop en route to Dodge Traditional Middle School. Once they arrived, the secretaries hosted a mini press conference for students, and observed a moment of silence for the first responders and other victims lost during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Students asked questions on topics


ranging from what the men had for dinner with President Obama, to where they went to school. Janae Waggoner, 13, asked why the officials accepted their jobs, and what inspired them to do them.


22 School Transportation News November 2013


In his childhood in Charlotte, N.C., Foxx said he grew up “on the wrong side of the tracks” and always wondered how to get to the other side, and what separated them. He said he noticed a gap in opportunities for people, and that as an adult that gap seemed to have widened for children growing up after him. So, in 2009 he ran for mayor of Char- lotte. He was nominated as transportation secretary by President Obama this spring and was confirmed by the Senate in July. Foxx said he believes transportation is


what connects people and links them to op- portunities, and that is why he accepted his post. Duncan said it’s about ending poverty. “When people are isolated,” he said, “It’s


hard to get that job, it’s hard to go to work.” Duncan added that the interconnected- ness of education, opportunity and trans- portation is part of an “important vision of


£ Secretary Duncan chats with students on the bus ride to Dodge Traditional Middle School on Sept. 11.


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