Tyler Hampton’s start in the pupil
Tyler Hampton | School Bus Driver College Station ISD, Texas
transportation is similar to that of many others, he shared. He became a part- time driver while attending college. After two years, he decided to get a job on campus, but quickly realized that his, “blood ran national school bus yellow.” Hampton has now been in the industry for the past 14 years, expanding his knowledge into routing and looking at transportation technology. Kerry Somerville, senior product manager for Safe Fleet, said that while Hampton’s official job title is school bus driver, he does so much more. Somerville, who has over 30 years experience working in the industry, said Hampton maintains the district’s mapping and routing software, tests new hardware and software, and works with vendors to ensure that they are providing the best possible service to the students. “College Station
has a transportation department that is very forward-thinking in technology and their approach to making sure they have drivers and get students to school safely, but Tyler is as they say the wheels on the bus that makes things go round and round,” Somerville said. “He is certainly an up-and-coming leader in the school transportation industry and he does not get enough credit for all the hard work he puts in.” Currently, Hampton said he is
working on moving the student accountability program forward. “We are in the fledgling state of onboarding one elementary school at a time while developing operating procedures for our district in the creation and use of school bus passes,” Hampton shared.
“Lessons learned and workflows refined over the fall will guide our implementation into the middle schools then high schools.” He noted that while he is a school
bus driver first and foremost, his day- to-day operations range from ensuring services for McKinney-Vento and limited English proficiency students to maintenance of technologies, primarily GPS and student accountability. “By far, my favorite and most fulfilling project to date has been taking care of displaced families from Hurricane Harvey in the fall of 2017,” he shared. “Within the space of 48 hours, we had absorbed hundreds of new families, many requiring transportation outside of normal operating areas. By the end of the week, we were able to provide transportation services to every family that needed them and continually expanded the network as more
families came into district.” His favorite part of the job?
Hampton said it is developing relationships with the his coworkers and the students’ families. “Every day has the potential to be the best day yet when you get to go to work with your wife, plan and solve problems with longtime coworkers, and make sure every one of our students gets to school and home safely at the end of the day,” he said, adding that wife Jessica Hampton (left) is also a school bus driver for the district. Tyler said Jessica started driving a
route for the district in 2010 because she enjoyed hearing the stories he would tell her each evening about his day.
38 School Transportation News • OCTOBER 2023
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