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Metro Lawmakers seek to make busing easier on students by Allison Aiken The Carolina Reporter South Carolina children might see limits on the amount of time they can spend on school buses. A bill prefiled by Sen. Glenn Reese, D-Spartanburg, would limit the time a child can ride on a bus to 10 minutes for each mile between the bus stop and school. It would also establish a maximum travel time of an hour and 15 minutes. But many people say those limits will only add problems to an already troubled busing sys tem. The main problem is there aren’t enough buses to go around, and as a result, children are spending more time on the buses.. This happens when schools are centrally located, said Doug Hamrick, assistant director of transportation for the S.C. Department of Education. “In many districts, there is just one high school, so it takes a long time to get the children to school,” he said. He used the students on Edisto Beach as an example. “The kids that live on the beach live in Colleton County, so they have to ride the bus all the way through Charleston County to get to Walterboro High,” he said. Hamrick said people must look at the bill’s many angles before deciding whether it’s a i ■ 1 good idea. He said it would likely affect buses for children with special needs the most. “There are hearing-impaired students in Pelion that come to Richland 1 for special programs,” he said. ‘We receive a consid erable amount of complaints from par ents, but we just try to explain that we're doing the best we can with what we have available to us. It's really a complicated in f 1 V4VI Fred Hoose, director of transportation, District 5 of Lexington and Richland counties “If there’s a limit on the amount of time they can spend on the bus, then they won’t be able to make it to the school,” he said. George Lee, director of transportation for Richland District 1, pointed out another problem for children with special needs. “When it takes five minutes to load a child in a wheelchair onto a bus, and you have to pick up 10 children, you’ve already spent 50 minutes just getting them on the bus,” he said. Lee also said traffic some times gets in the way of trans porting the children. “We can’t help it when a bus is stuck in traffic on Broad River Road for an hour,” he said. Traffic isn’t as big a problem as the number of children for School District 5 of Lexington and Richland counties. “We had a net gain of 450 children last year alone,” said Fred Hoose, director of trans portation for the district. According to Hoose, District 5 buses slightly more than 500,000 students each year and has 90 buses. A 1U Tl 1 tWUg U IViVVI 1 lglll now to our legislators about our situation,” he said. In South Carolina, the state owns and operates the buses. Districts look at the number of students and devise routes for buses to follow and then request a certain number of buses for each school. “We’re having to pick up kids earlier and earlier and get them home later and later,” Hoose said.* Hoose said his district’s main problem is that there aren’t enough buses. He said he’s also concerned about the safety issues of having so few buses. “Imagine packing 75 kids, book bags, instruments and all that other stuff on a bus. What if there’s an accident? With that s many kids, you can’t treat the injured as quickly,” he "Said. Another problem is that dis tricts can’t find enough bus dri vers. According to Hamrick, although drivers are paid more than minimum wage, they work only about 20 hours a week, which isn’t enough for benefits. Hoose said about 20 percent of his drivers are retired, but the majority are single moms who need jobs where they can be at home when their kids are at home. “Tired kids don’t learn,” Hoose said. “We receive a considerable amount of complaints from par ents, but we just try to explain that we’re doing the best we can with what we have available to us,” he said. “It’s really a complicated issue.” Coming Next Semester... College Night V.I.P. Parties! Thursday, January 13th & Thursday, January 20th (by invitation only) Get Your Invitation Tonight! Five Points Corner of Harden and Devine Information Hotline 256-2741 > - ' &■ _j11 Allison Aiken the Carolina reporter Students from H.E. Corley Elementary School in Irmo exit bus No. 9 as driver Jackie Evans watches to make sure they unload in an orderly manner. The students will still have 30 minutes to wait before class begins. Are there problems along the route? From safety to driver availability, school administrators in District 5 are struggling with the effects oi growrn on ousing. • Approximately 10,000 students ride buses in the district • District 5 has 359 routes with 4,000 stops daily • First pick-up each morning is as early as 6:25 a.m. ♦Driver pay is higher than the state average, starting at $8.77 an hour, but is still too low to attract and keep quality drivers • More than 300 students were added to the bus routes last year 1 Richland Counties Ryan Mosier the Carolina reporter $tUDY STATl0. ^ A place to study, < \ take a break, and grab a snack during Finals. 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