I had intended to write about a recent visit to a local restaurant today. I’d better save that for tomorrow. If I don’t say something about the school bus situation I will look like I spend my days with my head in the ground.
If you want news coverage, there is plenty. Our changing transportation issues have been in the Baltimore Sun/Howard County Times and the Baltimore Banner, and covered by Baltimore area television stations as well. To be blunt: yesterday was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for school bus service in Howard County, Maryland.
Yet again it seems like a good time for this James Thurber quote:
One day something went wrong with the cream separator, and one of her hands came to her and said nobody on the farm could fix it. Should they send to town for a man? "No!"shouted my Aunt Kate. "I'll fix it myself!" Shouldering her way past a number of dairy workers, farm hands and members of her family, she grasped the cream separator and began monkeying with it. In a short time she had reduced it to even more pieces than it had been in when she took hold of it. She couldn't fix it. She was just making things worse. At length, she turned on the onlookers and bawled. "Why doesn't somebody take this goddam thing away from me?"
I’d add to that the punchline of many a New England joke where the local tells out of towners, “you can’t get there from here.”
I want to believe that there is a possible world in which Howard County can get its students to school on time given the school hours we have established. I also want to believe that everyone involved on the school system end has been working in good faith to make that happen. I honestly don’t know or understand what led to what happened yesterday - - so many late buses and numerous children left stranded.
People who know everything are easily found on social media so it shouldn’t be too difficult to find some of that kind of talk if that is what you are looking for.
I am thinking today that somewhere in a classroom in Howard County is a child who has the potential to grow up and become an excellent transportation coordinator. They don’t know it. We don’t know it. But what we do know is that designing school bus routes and coordinating multiple providers is an extremely valuable and complicated job.
We often look for students who show exceptional gifts and abilities in terms of who will become a doctor, or a lawyer, a scientist or a concert pianist. But - - Heavens to Betsy! - - what we would give right now for someone (actually, multiple someones) whose joy and capabilities shine in school transportation. I am honestly thinking that there could be prodigies in such a field if we were but paying attention.
On the other hand, perhaps we do have people like already that but circumstances make it difficult if not impossible to do what they do best. They could be hampered by any number of decisions made by others: bureaucratic? financial? I honestly don’t know.
After yesterday I’d be willing to bet that many parents think that they’d be able to do a better job themselves. I don’t blame them for being frustrated or angry. But I wonder how often we contemplate the many moving pieces that go into transporting over 57,000 young people to and from school every day. It’s one of those things that, if done well, is almost invisible.
We don’t honor or glamorize positions like that and maybe we should. My guess is we don’t think much about that until days like yesterday. When have we read glowing newspaper articles about beloved transportation workers who lovingly kept the students safe and on time, year after year? Gold watches? Parades?
Imagine dedicating your life to a job like that. Your supreme goal is to be so good that you are invisible. In fact, the entire community wants you to be so good that they don’t have to think about you at all.
And we wonder why it’s so hard to find and retain bus drivers these days.
There are many other important issues in play here and I realized I haven’t touched on them all. I welcome your input. Right now I’m stuck on the concept that, if transporting students to school by bus is an expectation that we have, how are we growing and supporting people who have the potential to excel in these careers? From administrators to contractors to drivers, all these people need to come from somewhere.
If there is a quick fix for this, I don’t know it. I wish I did.
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