Board of Education votes to continue with bus monitors
By Phyllis Moore
Published in News on July 8, 2015 1:46 PM
The Wayne County Board of Education voted Monday night to continue providing bus monitors on shuttle buses transporting students from their base schools to the district's alternative school.
Dr. David Lewis, assistant superintendent for accountability, presented two options to alleviate potential problems on buses that continue on from the traditional schools to Wayne Middle/High Academy each day.
Option one would establish independent buses and routes, similar to what has been done at Wayne School of Engineering and Wayne Early/Middle College High School. Doing so, however, would require a schedule change -- 10:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. -- and an estimated cost of $204,000 from local funds, he said.
The second option, providing approximately six bus monitors to supervise the routes before and after school, would cost the district approximately $51,000, he said.
The latter was actually implemented in the last six weeks of this past school year, where Lewis reported a "big improvement" in behavioral issues on the buses when he made a similar presentation at the recent finance committee meeting. Board members at that meeting included Board Chairman Chris West, Arnold Flowers and Jennifer Strickland.
Since one of the reasons students are assigned to Wayne Academy is "discipline issues," West suggested the second option doesn't solve the problem.
"We still put our kids on a traditional school bus with kids that don't go to alternate school," he said. "The shuttle is one part of it. It has helped, but that's kind of defeating the purpose.
"They can't go to any traditional events on the campus, yet we put them back on the traditional bus two times a day. With option one, it's not there."
But the trade-off, Flowers said, is that with additional buses for that school, the students would not be monitored.
"If I was in that situation, me personally, a bus driver, I would probably rather have another person than a separate route," he said, especially in cases of students considered "borderline dangerous."
"My understanding was that the problems we're trying to solve, students don't feel like they're accountable to that school anymore," Lewis said. "Now with the monitors in place, they have got somebody to be accountable to."
He added that option one would include some very long bus routes, upwards to an hour-and-a-half to an hour-and-45 minutes.
West focused on the liability impact to the district, particularly if an extreme situation erupted.
"I'm not painting these kids as criminals, but there have been instances where there have been weapons on board," he said. "We have got one time for one of these to take a knife out and slash somebody when they're not even supposed to be in the company of (these other) kids," he said. "The $51,000 that it may cost is probably minimal to what could happen."
"That's where I'm struggling," Mrs. Strickland said.
She said that lacking further information on the nature of the violations committed by students, she was not prepared to vote on it, but was leaning toward option two.
Flowers proposed the matter be taken to the full board without a recommendation.
At the Monday meeting, board member Rick Pridgen asked Lewis about the success equated with using bus monitors.
Lewis said there had been positive results, with the biggest issue being the "down time" waiting for the shuttle buses.
"It helped," he said. "Did it solve every single problem? No, sir. It did not. But it helped."
Pridgen asked what Lewis' recommendation would be.
"This is because of the dollar amount, but there were no incidents that actually took place on the buses, so I felt better about there being less of a safety issue," Lewis replied. "My hesitation is that I know that are other needs elsewhere. It's a balancing act.
"We can spend it on this if you would like. It just means we won't have (the money) somewhere else."
Pridgen made a motion to continue using bus monitors for the upcoming school year. Mrs. Strickland seconded it.
Board member Pat Burden suggested just trying it for another semester.
With that, a vote was taken and the motion passed 6-1, with West casting the opposing vote.