School Bus Drivers

Opinion by Ken Herron:Over the years I have known a number of friends who drove the school buses. Several times I have had people to suggest that I should drive a school bus and I quickly tell them I could not do that. I could not ignore kids that misbehave and I would be in trouble trying to drive and keep them in control. Those that enjoy driving a school bus usually do it for years and have very few problems. I always was a “town kid” that went to school on a bicycle or walked and had one of my parents to take me in the family car if it was raining. I had friends that lived in the communities outside of town and they rode on a bus to get to the consolidated high school. Kids did not misbehave as much in those days and most of them considered it to be fun to ride the bus. I did not participate in sports so I did not even get to ride the school bus to out of town sporting events.

The ideal school bus driver loves the kids and learns all of their names and greets them as they get on the bus. He or she smiles and waits for them to be safely seated before the bus begins to move. The drivers that love their job sometimes do it long enough to drive the children of students that they drove to school when they were young.

These drivers are a valuable part of the school system. It is hard to employ enough good drivers to fill all of the positions in large school systems. The pay is not very high and they have to commit to being up and out of the house at an early hour. They then have a long period of down time before the late afternoon route of returning the students to their homes. There are not many second jobs that will permit the drivers to work somewhere else until time to return to the school for the going home trip. The amount of money that a school bus driver can make is not enough to provide a living so this is often a person whose spouse works a full time job and the school bus driving helps to provide added income.

The feature that draws many of the school bus drivers in Georgia is the fact that as a permanent employee of the school system they can participate in the State Merit Health Insurance Plan. One of my friends was self-employed and found that the cost of health insurance for him on an independent basis was so high that driving the school bus was the best answer for having health insurance. He had a Master’s Degree from college and was a part time college professor at a college that offered night classes. Another friend was the wife of a preacher and the insurance was the attraction that kept her driving a school bus for many years.

The importance of these school bus driving positions has escaped Governor Deal and his friends in the Georgia Legislature and they have decided that one of the ways they can help to balance the budget of the State of Georgia is to stop providing health insurance for school bus drivers and cafeteria workers. They claim that they wish to improve the education system in Georgia but to me this proposal is far away from being an improvement for the school system. I don’t think that they considered eliminating health insurance and the retirement plan for the Legislators and the Governor’s staff. It amazes me that their choice for reducing the cost of education is to pick out the lowest paid employees to cut benefits.

It would certainly be ironic if the insurance benefits for the drivers and cafeteria workers were eliminated to save money and then they had to substantially increase the pay to get enough drivers to handle all of the buses. I am certain that there will be a substantial number of drivers who will retire from driving if the insurance benefits are discontinued.

At the time of this writing this bill has not passed the Georgia Legislature and I hope that there are enough members of the Legislature that realize that this is a mistake to block this proposal and find other places to save money.

Sometimes it helps to email our State Representative and State Senator. The western part of Gordon County is represented by John.Meadows@house.ga.gov and the eastern part of the county is represented by Rick.Jasperse@house.ga.gov . In the Georgia Senate all of Gordon County is represented by Chuck.Hufstetler@senate.ga.gov. Let them know how we feel.