More than three decades ago, after Max Christensen literally helped a man out of a hole, he received a job offer in return.
“I was renting some farmland, and there was another gentleman [renting land] at this farm,” he recalled. “One day I was farming and he was out checking his cows, and had gotten stuck in a mud hole. I took my tractor down, hooked the chain on, and pulled him out.”
Christensen turned down payment from the man for his services, instead encouraging him to pay the favor forward. As it turned out, that favor seems to have been paid back to him.
His fellow farmer was also the transportation director at the nearby Anita School District at the time. About a year later, that man resigned and recommended Christensen as a replacement. Christensen agreed to an interview with the superintendent even though, he told him, he hadn’t been on a school bus since he was in high school.
“By the time I left his office, I had the position,” he says. “That’s how I got started in the profession.”
In his more than 30 years of work in pupil transportation, Max Christensen has applied his forward-thinking attitude to help grapple with major issues in the industry, such as driver shortage and using technology to increase efficiency, as well as to update training to keep his state and pupil transporters across the U.S. current on important issues.
Christensen also has exemplary communication skills that enable him to cultivate successful partnerships not only for the Iowa Department of Education, where he works as an executive officer, but with industry associations as well.
“He is a gifted communicator,” says Tom Cooley, bureau chief at the Iowa Department of Education, and Christensen’s supervisor. “Watching how he interacts with people, Max is very friendly and knowledgeable, and has a good sense of humor.”
Christensen has managed in the 16 years that he has worked for the department to improve efficiency and enhance safety for students by bringing the state’s driver training and school bus inspection systems online, and by spearheading projects that test technology such as supplemental warning lights on buses.
Cooley says that Christensen’s accomplishments include ensuring that the department, in particular the Bureau of Finance, Facilities, Operation and Transportation Services, is always apprised of transportation trends.
Beyond his work for the state department, Christensen’s efforts have been effective on a national level. He is deeply involved in professional organizations, having bolstered the efforts of the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services (NASDPTS) by serving as a board member, president, and past president over the last several years, and helping to clarify important positions, such as the association’s stance on seat belts. Moreover, he has helped NASDPTS continue to support the National Congress on School Transportation (NCST) by taking the lead in coordinating a new location for the Congress in 2015.
For his dedication not only to school transportation safety in Iowa but across the U.S. for the last three
decades, School Bus Fleet named Max Christensen its 2018 Administrator of the Year.
Forward-Thinking Mindset
After three years as a school bus driver and over a dozen years of working as a transportation director for a couple different school districts in the state, Christensen joined the Iowa Department of Education in 2003. He immediately worked to transition the state’s school bus inspection system as well as its bus driver and vehicle records from a paper-based to an electronic system.
In 2005, Christensen used information on an online training system he learned about at the National Association for Pupil Transportation conference that year to develop a similar system for new school bus drivers that has been in place since 2010.
The previous 12 hour in-person-only training for an average of about 1,000 new school bus drivers every year often proved too daunting for many would-be drivers to schedule.
“It was getting more difficult for drivers to schedule their time for this training — it was broken up into six hours on two Saturdays or a few hours at a time on four weekdays — because many of them had a second job, and we all have busy lives,” he says.
By moving to 14 hours of online training, followed by three hours of face-to-face training, candidates can train at any time in any location with an internet connection. That’s not only more convenient for the prospective drivers; it also helps schools hire them faster, Christensen adds.
“My goal has always been to be progressive in our ideas in regard to training drivers, making it easier for schools to communicate with the Department of Education, and do their jobs,” he says.
