District needs more drivers

The school choice plan is creating the need for lots more bus routes and new drivers.

LARGO - The number of school bus routes crisscrossing Pinellas County is expected to jump by 40 percent in August, thanks mostly to the new choice system that allowed families to pick schools well outside their neighborhoods.

The change will cost the school district an extra $6.5-million this year, by far the biggest cost of the choice system to date. Much of the money will go to hiring as many as 175 new drivers, and the district is trying to get them to apply now so they can be trained before school starts.

"We don't have much time," said the district's transportation director, Terry Palmer.

If enough drivers can't be hired, Plan B is not a good one, he said. Some children may not get to school on time.

Bus drivers earn $10.96 an hour plus benefits. The perks include a big chunk of time in the middle of the day between routes, plus summers and holidays off. They also get to work with kids.

Some of the drawbacks: dealing with misbehavior, Pinellas County traffic and parents.

"It's a tough job, let's be real blunt. But we do have a lot to offer," Palmer said. "We can teach anybody to drive a bus. The real key is liking to work with kids. ... If you don't like kids, don't bother.

Under choice, many schools drew students from neighborhoods clear across the county, a factor that will raise the number of routes to as many as 696, up from 513 routes this year. In addition, the district's pledge to provide bus rides for students at fundamental schools will add another 25 routes.

"We've got to cover more territory than we have in the past," Palmer said, looking at maps that pinpoint where choice students are located. "I've got them everywhere."

Azalea Middle School in west St. Petersburg will draw students from the northeastern and southern edges of the city, plus Tierra Verde and the south beaches.

Oak Grove Middle School in southern Clearwater has attracted students from the northernmost reaches of Pinellas: Tarpon Springs, East Lake and Palm Harbor.

Starkey Elementary in Seminole will get many of its students from across mid county.

In past years, most students were clustered in geographic zones around their schools. With choice, the broad, scattershot pattern of kids who need a bus ride works against efficiency and drives up costs. In some cases, a 65-passenger bus may be dispatched to pick up a handful of students or even one child. But Palmer said his department would try to limit that practice by using the same bus to deliver to schools near each other.

In most but not all cases, students will ride with peers in their own general age group. The School Board last year dropped a proposal for a hub system that involved students switching buses mid route.

If the first few months of Pinellas County's new school choice system seemed difficult, with thousands of students migrating to new schools and hundreds of unhappy parents, consider that getting students to where they belong is the biggest and most expensive part of the new plan.

The district has spent months getting families to tour schools and make their choices, and conducting massive mailings and public relations campaigns. But the cost for those tasks comes to only $250,000.

In contrast, the $6.5-million in added transportation costs for choice next year is only the beginning. The district expects to pay similar amounts for the following two or three years until the cost eventually becomes an accepted part of the budget.

On any day, getting kids to school is among the biggest jobs the district performs. Palmer's department is by far the district's biggest single cost center with a budget of $21.6-million this year. He also has the most employees.

To brace for the up-front choice transportation costs, the School Board has been socking money away for more than three years. The total comes to about $22-million, and the School Board is not inclined to touch it, even in a budget year that has the board eliminating nearly 600 positions.

Among the lost jobs will be about 400 teaching assistants, library assistants and other support staff who serve disabled students. Those employees have been asked to apply for bus driving jobs, but only 33 have applied.

Palmer said he expects more to apply when the budget picture becomes clearer. Still, he expects to need a significant pool of applicants from outside the district.

Unable to afford advertising, the district has taken to posting fliers in libraries, grocery stores and Laundromats.

Driving a school bus is "quite different" from driving a car, Palmer said. The distance between the front and back wheels is 21 feet. Tight turns are out of the question. And there are blind spots at the right rear and front of the vehicle.

But the more challenging part of the job is dealing with the students behind you. One part of the training is learning to gauge what the road ahead will look like for the next 15 seconds while you check the mirror to see what they're doing, said Brenda Lewis, the district official in charge of training drivers.

Potential drivers are given "student management" training that includes tips on how to prevent violent outbursts. It also includes instruction on a range of student disabilities and training on how to deal with children of varying ethnicities, Lewis said.

The most challenging, according to Palmer, are middle school students.

"They don't know who they are, much less trying to relate to anybody else," he said.

During training, drivers view videos of situations on school buses that were handled well or not so well by their peers, Lewis said. About 300 of the district's buses are equipped with video cameras, and more are being added over time, she said.

She said she expects to be training drivers all summer.

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