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An audit finds that of Jefferson County (Ala.) School District’s 400 buses, drivers are taking 61 of them home each day to places farther than their bus route, adding nearly $172,000 in fuel costs. The deputy superintendent is talking with drivers about finding a more cost-efficient place to park their buses.
Read More →The service for regular-education students at Hoover City Schools was set to end with the 2014-15 school year, but Superintendent Andy Craig and school officials are now exploring ways to continue offering the service with the district’s own bus fleet and drivers and to charge students a fee to ride the bus. Craig says that the ability for the district to both receive state allocation for transportation and collect fees from bus riders was the primary factor in this latest decision.
Read More →As the new school year approaches, the state Department of Education’s Pupil Transportation Unit reminds drivers of the recently passed Charles Poland Jr. Act, which makes school bus trespassing a Class A misdemeanor. The office also reminds drivers of the state’s laws regarding stopping for school buses.
Read More →Hoover (Ala.) City Schools holds a forum to address the board of education’s decision to stop the service with the 2014-15 school year, and parents, students and other community members attend and tell school officials that their decision was a mistake. The district’s superintendent says he is still exploring other variations of the plan, such as phasing in the bus cuts over a longer period of time.
Read More →Hoover City Schools officials expect that ending the service — to go into effect in August 2014 — will save more than $2.5 million per year. The district cites "sharply declining revenues" as a key factor in the decision.
Read More →The Alabama school bus driver receives a posthumous School Bus Champion Award from the American School Bus Council for his actions to protect his bus passengers during a standoff with a gunman. Dale County Schools Superintendent Donny Bynum, who accepted the award on behalf of Poland’s family, says, “Not a day goes by that I don’t think about Mr. Poland and what he did. He is the definition of a hero.”
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Trespassing on or interfering with a school bus in Alabama could result in jail time under the newly passed Charles "Chuck" Poland Jr. Act, named after the Midland City driver who was fatally shot while protecting his passengers from an intruder in January.
Read More →Dr. Thomas Bice, Alabama’s superintendent of schools, presents proclamations to each of the students who were on their school bus when it was hijacked by gunman Jimmy Lee Dykes, who allegedly shot driver Charles Poland and then abducted one student. Bice says the students displayed safety skills that Poland taught them, and he recounts how the students loved Poland.
Read More →At a celebration held at Transportation South, Harry Leach of Trussville City Schools is named Alabama's Love the Bus driver of the year. A moment of silence is observed for Charles Poland, the driver who was fatally shot while protecting his passengers in Midland City.
Read More →The confrontation between an armed intruder and school bus driver Charles Poland lasted more than four minutes, with Poland standing in the aisle to block the gunman from his students and refusing to move, according to a report from CNN. Meanwhile, students in the back of the bus opened the rear emergency exit so they could escape.
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