Team petitions to use custom shuttle bus

Clarkston High School wrestling booster Steve Barham’s $25,000 labor of love, a bus he donated to the school for use by the team, sits in storage at a cost of $200 per month to Barham.

The 25-seat airport shuttle-style vehicle, painted in school colors and with a school mascot Bantams decal, is dazzling. The inside, with such amenities as drop-down LCD monitors and sound system, even specially installed seat belts, is even more impressive.

All Bantams wrestling coach Dan Randles wants is to be able to drive it.

“It’s done as good as a bus can be done,” he said. “The vehicle is incredible.”

But the Washington state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, citing safety regulations, says it can’t be used. At least not for transporting school athletic teams.

“School districts cannot own and operate a vehicle that seats more than 10 unless it is a yellow school bus,” said Mike Kenney, regional transportation director for OSPI who works out of ESD 101 in Spokane. “School buses are safer. We want students off bikes, cars and charter buses and into school buses.”

Randles, however, has never been one to take no for an answer and is seeking an exception. He e-mailed state Sen. Larry Sheahan last year, and his campaign reached the governor and filtered back to OSPI.

The reply was not encouraging. Allen Jones, director of pupil transportation and traffic safety, explained in a letter that the federal government sets safety standards for school buses.

“The type of vehicles that are used by airport shuttle services, charter bus companies or mass transit systems are not certified as meeting these essential standards,” he wrote.

The letter explained that “compartmentalization” seating in a bus, among other regulations, keeps students safer in a rollover. In the shuttle bus, students sit too far apart, windows are too high and there is too little padding to meet the regulations.

Although the OSPI does not set the standards, it requires that all vehicles carrying more than 10 people meet them.

“I understand that having a vehicle such as you describe would, on the surface, be a focus of team spirit,” the letter concludes. “However, the spirit of school bus safety standards is to make sure the students of today survive to become the strong citizens of Washington’s future.”

Barham owns a logging business that was originally headquartered in Orofino, Idaho. He moved to Clarkston, where two of his sons wrestled. They would often travel in vans that, he said, were in poor condition.

It took two or three years to find the bus in Tacoma. He purchased the Ford, took it to a dealer in Lewiston and had them fix “anything they could find wrong. I put quite a bit of money in it and got it up to shape.”

Then, he said, he got a little more extreme and decided the kids needed entertainment. He put $8,000 into the video and audio system.

Just before the beginning of the wrestling season, Barham said, it was determined that seat belts needed to be added. He had them flown in from Chicago and installed.

“It never crossed my mind they couldn’t use it,” Barham said. “I told them I would do the service work, keep it up and supply the gas. All I needed was to get it under the school’s liability insurance.”

It was unfortunate, said Superintendent Pete Lewis, that things weren’t checked out ahead of time. He said he was willing to work with Barham and the school’s insurer.

All that was needed was a Washington State Patrol vehicle inspection. That, said Lewis, is where the school district reached a dead end.

“We explored all avenues to see if we could use it,” said Lewis, “but unfortunately it doesn’t meet state standards, and they wouldn’t inspect it.”

WSP officer Wayne Bray explained that there is a specific set of standards for school buses, including emergency lighting, windows, padding, seat arrangement and spacing.

And so the bus sits idle while both Barham and Randles fume.

“We worked really hard so the kids could ride in it,” said Lewis.

Technically, there is a way to get around the regulations, said Randles. If a charter company owned the bus and insured it, it could be used by the team.

Which doesn’t make sense to Barham.

“This is a long ways past ridiculous. I’m beating myself against a wall. I don’t know the safety specs, but don’t see how a kid seat-belted in a high bucket seat with a (chauffer) licensed driver wouldn’t be (safe),” Barham said.

He said he’s considering dismantling the vehicle or giving it away.

“I can drive a mile across the river to Lewiston High School, and they’ll take it and love it,” Barham said.

Mike Randles, wrestling coach at Sandpoint, told his brother he’d figure a way to use it.

The Idaho State Police, unlike Washington, does not get involved with inspections of buses. ISP Sgt. Scott Hanson said, “The only thing we would do is take action if needed. Basically, it’s up to the school district what bus it wants to use.”

Rod McKnight, the supervisor of transportation for Idaho schools concurred, although he, too, said that yellow school buses are the safest mode of transportation for students.

“We don’t prohibit their use,” he said of Barham’s gift, “but would certainly discourage it. We believe yellow buses are the safest way to transport, but we’d say, ‘Do what you want.’ “

Coeur d’Alene schools chief financial officer and transportation overseer Steve Briggs, while expressing empathy with Barham’s generosity and intent, said their schools would probably not accept the van. He cited the safety records of school buses.

Kenney said if the school wants to fight and get the law changed, “have at it. I know what they’re trying to do. TVs, comfortable seats, that’s great. But if it rolls over, it falls to pieces.”

Randles is undeterred. In the e-mail to Sheahan last winter, he said that his wrestlers have ridden thousands of miles on a yellow school bus, and he wants them to be able to travel in comfort.

“We’ll continue to work through our representatives or senators in some way,” he said. “I just hope there’s some way for us to get to use the bus.”