School Bus Driving Not Child’S Play

The first time you sit behind the wheel of a bus, you feel like a kid again. The bus looks long and intimidating, like it stretches on forever.

Or so it seemed to Marilynne Dierks, one of five Valley residents who participated in the West Valley School District’s bus driver training program last week.

“Turning is the worst,” she said. “Learning where your axis is is tricky.”

Dierks looked from mirror to mirror on Wednesday as she practiced backing the bus around a stop sign on Ely Lane south of the Dishman Hills.

On her second try, Dierks, a former account manager for United Retail Merchants, slid the bus around the corner without hugging the curb too closely. She’s never driven a large vehicle before.

“Good turn Marilynne,” said Carolyn Havens, the veteran WV bus driver who teaches the course. “That dip on the side of the road is enough to tip the bus over, but you were clear.”

“I think that was a fluke,” Dierks answered. “Let me try again.”

Joe Dawson, the district’s transportation director, is pleased with the careful attitude the students in this year’s bus driver training class display.

Their quick progress also is a relief, he said. Dawson needs to hire a handful of new bus drivers to cover the extra routes created when the district changed its school starting times for the fall.

Because the high school and middle schools will now start within 15 minutes of each other, Dawson will be adding six new buses to his fleet.

To drive these buses in the state of Washington, Dawson’s students need to pass a written test to earn their commercial drivers license and a driving skills test to earn a passenger endorsement.

To prepare drivers to meet the requirements, the West Valley transportation department runs its training course once a year. This year’s class included two days of book work followed by three days of driving.

“We don’t just take a person and put them on a bus, and say `Go ahead. Drive kids,”’ Dawson said.

Instead, the instructor Carolyn Havens took the students driving at the fairgrounds, on the prairie, downtown and across the Valley.

At the fairgrounds, the group walked through the steps required when loading and unloading kids.

First, the driver has to pull the bus up close to the kids, but not too close. Then they engage the air brake, send out the stop sign, put the blinking lights on and open the door.

The driver counts each kid who gets on the bus and records the number in a log. Once the kids are seated, the driver reverses the process, checks for dogs and little brothers alongside the bus and departs.

That may be a lot to remember, but in the 10 years since Havens began teaching the course, every one of her students has easily passed the state licensing tests.

“That’s a perfect record,” she said. “Which is important for our kids.”