Ladies and Gentlemen – the Bus Drivers of America

Ten Casual Observations for a new school year!
Your child’s bus driver may be just an anonymous person in your day-to-day life, but take some time and get to know them.
Driving a bus is NOT and easy task. A typical school bus is 40 FEET LONG and holds between 66 and 90 children. Picture yourself navigating a 40 foot stick shift vehicle through morning AND evening rush hour. No radio, no comfy seat adjustments or targeted Air Conditioning. Just you and the monster, and the traffic, AND
85 middle schoolers.

Sounds like a nightmare, right?

It is no wonder drivers occasionally take things a bit over the line while attempting to keep order:

1. Bus driver charged after taping children's mouths shut.
Greenwood County deputies have charged a bus driver with eight counts of cruelty to children after she admitted she taped their mouths shut with duct tape after they misbehaved. Investigators say 35-year-old Helen Curry told them she gave the children a choice of putting on the tape or being written up for bad behavior.
2. Substitute bus driver slaps and chokes teen.
According to Charlotte County sheriff's reports, the fight happened last Tuesday afternoon when the driver tried to put a seat belt on an unruly child who refused to wear it. He then told the boy to sit up front, but the boy refused. When the driver walked to the back of the bus, the boys older brother got in his way and cursed at him. The driver then slapped the brother in the face and grabbed his throat, the video shows. The brother is then seen on the video as pushing and punching the 66-year-old bus driver.

Add to the equation that drivers are not paid very well, median salary is $30.000 a year, and it is no wonder they look for money on the side:

3. 27 school bus drivers were among fifty-six government employees - including a police officer, a felony court clerk, two corrections officers - who were arrested in a scam that used health insurance information to fraudulently obtain prescriptions for the painkiller OxyContin.

4. Bus Driver Union Leader Jailed For Racketeering. Salvator Battaglia, aka “Hotdogs,” former president of Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union was sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court to 57 months in prison.

5. A Dayton school bus driver sold a kilogram of cocaine to an undercover police officer. Paul Harrington Jr. sold investigators 2.2 pounds of cocaine. Harrington has been charged with trafficking drugs, possession of cocaine and possession of criminal tools.

The glamor and high pay bring all kinds of candidates out of the woodwork for this job, especially pervs.

6. Former school bus driver gets 30 years in prison for lewd battery on schoolgirl.

7. KCK school-bus driver accused of sexual misconduct with kid. A bus driver for the Kansas City, Kan., School District has been I with sexual misconduct involving a child. The prosecuting attorney charged Edward Allan Lawrentiew, 57, last week with sexual misconduct involving a child less than 14 years old. He also faces two counts of possession of a controlled substance. All three charges are felonies.

8. Creepy Kentucky bus driver arrested. Bus driver accused of using MySpace to lure teen: 46-year-old Gary L. Clark of Morehead, Kentucky Police said he solicited the boy to meet him Saturday and allegedly coerced him into getting into his vehicle. There, “inappropriate actions” occurred, but police declined to elaborate. The victim was not one of the kids that rode his bus.

9. Bus driver sentenced for having child porn. The Lane Transit District worker will serve four years and three months in prison. He was sentenced Wednesday to four years and three months in federal prison for possessing child pornography that he traded on the Internet.

10. A Jersey City bus driver charged with sexual battery. While transporting developmentally disabled adults to school today she was arrested in Bergen County on charges she instructed a female passenger to touch the genitals of a male passenger.

Please keep these Ten Casual Observations in mind with the start of the new school year.

Ask little Johnny and Jane,
Did the driver get you to school on time?
Did he or she touch you in a private spot or ask for your Myspace name?
Did the driver try to sell you OxyContin?