school bus driver improves time by 40%

BY KATHRYN A. HIGGINS

HARTFORD, CT -- Fledgling school bus driver Sam Christo has improved his driving time by 40% in the three weeks since school started. Whereas on the first day of school it took him nearly 35 minutes to pick up his designated elementary school students, he was able to do it yesterday in less than 25 minutes.

"It was tough to make good time the first few weeks," said Christo, as he relaxed with a cigarette after his morning route. "I was still figuring out the neighborhoods, getting to know the kids, and dealing with moms who wanted to chat. But now I've gotten my time down significantly, except for that one glitch today."

Christo's average suffered slightly when he was delayed by a mom on Center Street who ran out of her house in her pajamas and waved frantically to get him to stop for her kids.

"You're at least five minutes early," she said to Christo, citing the bus pick-up times listed at the beginning of each school year in the local paper.

"No, I don't think so," said Christo, checking his watch.

It turned out that Christo's watch was set five minutes ahead of the Center Street mother's, who later confirmed hers to be accurate. 

The bus driver, while asserting his watch was correct, added "I try to run two minutes ahead of schedule."

Which makes him, according to the frazzled mom, at least seven minutes earlier than expected.

As the bus roared off, a group of moms convened to decide who would make a run to school with all the items their kids had forgotten in the confusion.

A neighbor of the Frazzled Mom said: "My son is new to the whole bus thing and he's pretty nervous about it. His teacher and I have come up with a rewards program -- smiley faces and whatnot -- to encourage him to take the bus. It messes up our system when the bus is early and he misses it. He refuses to get in the car."

Another neighbor, whose kids usually board the bus in front of the Frazzled Mom's house, claimed: "My kids have missed the bus at least half the time this year -- much more than last year."

"It's frantic chaos when the bus arrives early," said the Frazzled Mom. "Stuff gets left behind and I have to drive it to school; it makes me late for work.”"

The Frazzled Mom had sent an email to the school principal the previous week, when the school bus had whizzed by during a torrential downpour. According to the F.M., Center Street is a thoroughfare for the town's fleet of school buses, so although she and her kids had noticed a bus speeding by early, they had no suspicion whatsoever that it was theirs.

"We were pretty much on time, although we were fiddling with our umbrellas," said the F.M. "We waited out in the pouring rain for 10 minutes before our neighbors yelled that the bus had gone by early. So, I loaded the kids in the car and joined the caravan to the school. It was dark and rainy and the school was deluged with hundreds of cars, as well as torrential rain. So, I sent an email to the principal."

The principal of the elementary school acknowledged the email and forwarded it to a public school Bureaucratic Functionary, whose apparent job is to act as a buffer between parents and bus drivers. The B.F., goaded into action, immediately sent an email to the F.M.

"I will sent this [sic] to the bus driver's manager. But the buses, by law, are not allowed to stop if there are no students standing at the stop. The buses are not allow [sic] to stop and wait. Yes, over the years they would do this, but as of last year the state is enforcing this because of the heavy travel [sic] roads. And it sounds like, because they took cover, no one was standing there as the bus went by."

The F.M. then responded to the B.F. saying it defied common sense for the bus driver to race past bus stops, especially on days of torrential rain, and that her street was not that well-traveled except for speeding buses, and that it was a case of either the bus slowing down enough to pick up kids in bad weather or the school being swamped with traffic in bad weather, and that none of the kids on her street had made the bus.

The B.F. then fired back an email loaded with incredulous exclamation marks.

"There are 8 stops along Center Street and you say 17 students didn't get picked up!!!!!!"

"I didn't want to engage any further with the B.F., so I forwarded the whole email exchange to the School Superintendent and then I went back to work," said the F.M. "I never heard anything back."

Record-breaking bus driver Christo was unaware of the exchange. "It really helps my time that I don't have to stop if kids aren't exactly at the bus stop," he gloated, receiving high-fives from his fellow bus drivers for his dramatic time improvement. "The less I have to stop, the more my time improves. If I can beat the kids in the beginning of the route, then I am more likely to beat the kids later in the route.

"Center Street has been especially good to me," Christo added. "It's a thru street and they don't enforce the speed limit at all, so I can really haul ass through there if I'm careful not to look sideways and catch the eye of some parent."

No traffic-related incidents or deaths have occurred yet this school year on Center Street, but it's only October.

Kathryn A. Higgins is writer and mom living with her two children in Connecticut. She recently received her MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Her publishing credits include: McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Real Simple Magazine, health.com, Sanskrit, farmhousemagazine.com, Whatever, and Musings; she has also written a regular column for the Connecticut Post, as well as features for various newspapers, and is a Reader for the Paris Review. You can reach her at: kathrynahiggins@aol.com.