Bus drivers deserve consideration

To the editor

By:
   I am writing in response to your article about the school bus driver, who hit the brakes and children were injured.
   In his defense, I would say that while it may have been a lapse in judgement on his part, it was not done with malice toward the children.
   This is a dedicated driver who cares about the safety of his passengers, who would never do anything to intentionally hurt his students.
   Yet, it seems that the town and the parents want his blood. While just a few short weeks ago, a child was left in South Jersey while on a class trip and hardly a word was mentioned about that except to somehow try to blame the bus driver for that, too.
   The children in this town, for the most part, are respectful to the drivers, but on the other hand when you tell them to sit down, they will do what you say and the second you look away they are standing again.
   They will "yes" you to death and go ahead and do just what they want. If you take them back to school for this or write them up every time, these kids would never get home.
   Yes, we do have seat belts and we can tell them to buckle up but the minute you leave the school the belts are off.
   Only the very young still actually do what they are told. The others just loosen the belt or take it off and stand up anyway.
   Parents have no idea what it is really like on the bus, just imagine going on a trip to Grandma’s house, how many times do you have to tell the kids to stop bothering each other or stop fighting or don’t be so loud — now multiply that by 50.
   Yet the bus driver is supposed to know what every child is doing and saying to every other child in the bus and paying attention to the road, so that every child gets home safely. This is done 180 days of the year, year after year and most of the time without incident.
   How many times has a driver found a book or a backpack or some other item that to a child may be important, not so important that they still left it on the bus, but that driver will bring it to their house on their own time to make sure that it gets back to them?
   How many times has a driver not left off a young child because a parent was not there to meet that child or gone back in the same area for the next route and found a child they let off an hour earlier still standing at the front door waiting for the parent to get home and taken that child back on the bus, until an adult could be found to take the child?
   When a child gets on the bus until he or she gets back in your door that child is like one of our own, and the most important thing is to make sure your child gets home safely even if it means we have to take the child back and wait for you to get home. Still, for some reason after all of this, drivers are still treated like third-class citizens by many of the children and their parents.
   Maybe the parents and the town should look at the big picture.

Janet Conlon
Pleasant View Road