NATIONAL COALITION OF SCHOOL BUS SAFETY NEWS UP TO DEC. 2003

Traffic violations, suspensions, criminal pasts -- and they're driving school buses in Georgia
March 7, 2001

"Overall, depending on how you would classify the word "safe", yeah, I'm a safe driver."

By Mary Lou Pickel and David A. Milliron
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writers

Harry Osborne says he's a good driver. Not everyone agrees.

Osborne's driver's license has been suspended 20 times in 25 years. He has racked up 13 tickets in a dozen years for speeding in a school zone, improper lane change, driving without a license, backing into cars, and other violations.

Until two weeks ago, he drove DeKalb County school bus 1221, shuttling students to the DeKalb School of Performing Arts even though his license was suspended. Citizens have called to complain about his driving three times this school year. Yet the school district kept him on the road until a reporter called two weeks ago.

"I don't think someone like that should be driving a school bus," DeKalb parent Sara Costner said. "You want someone with a clean record, not a consistent record of driving mistakes."

Hundreds of drivers with questionable driving records maneuver school buses every day, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution/WSB Channel 2 Action News investigation found. Using the Open Records Act, reporters were able to match 62 percent of Georgia's bus drivers with their driving and criminal histories.

Most bus drivers have good driving records, the investigation found. In fact, nearly half of Georgia's bus drivers whose records were examined had spotless driving histories.

But as many as one in six drivers has a serious violation on his or her personal or professional driving record, ranging from excessive speed to DUI, according to driving records. In the past seven years, 613 school bus drivers have had their licenses suspended, including 21 who were still ferrying children this month despite suspended licenses. Eleven former habitual traffic violators -- drivers who committed at least three serious traffic offenses within five years -- drove buses this school year.

People with criminal convictions also drive school buses. The investigation found 342 Georgia school bus drivers with criminal records, including 22 who have spent time in prison. The charges included armed robbery and cruelty to children.

Drivers with checkered records include:
Marvin Randolph White, 41, in Monroe County, near Macon, has received 13 speeding tickets in the past 11 years, a ticket for an open alcohol container and a license suspension for bad driving. Until two weeks ago, he was driving a Monroe County school bus on a suspended license. White was pulled from his route after a call from a reporter. The district is investigating.

In Murray County, near Dalton, Greg Jerome Wilbanks, 44, has driven a school bus for five years. He piled up six DUIs from 1974 to 1987.

Also in Murray County, Carl Leon Wright Jr., 47, started driving a bus last year, even though his record contains at least six traffic tickets since 1990, including a ticket for weaving through a railroad crossing while the lights were flashing.

Officials in the northwest Georgia county, where three children died last year in a bus/train crash, never checked Wright's driving record before hiring him, they acknowledged. After a reporter contacted them, district officials placed Wilbanks and Wright on administrative leave this month to investigate their records.

In all, 34 Georgia school bus drivers were sidelined by their districts after the Journal-Constitution and WSB inquired about them.

In DeKalb and Fulton counties, 41-year-old Carey Ward, who spent a year behind bars for molesting an 11-year-old girl, drove a bus for both school districts in recent years.

Why do school districts hand the bus keys to these employees? 
1. Georgia does not require school districts to review bus drivers' driving histories. And while most metro Atlanta districts do at least annual checks of personal and professional driving backgrounds, most see only seven years' worth of driving history. While many school officials say older driving transgressions should be forgiven, others disagree -- especially in cases of multiple DUIs or other serious offenses.

2. The state does not offer guidelines to evaluate driving histories, and many local districts have no written policies.

3. The backlog of paper tickets means that some driving infractions don't make it onto the state's computers for months or even a year, so recent offenses can go undetected by local districts.

4. While all Georgia school employees must submit to a criminal background check to comply with a state law passed last year, school districts will not see the record of anyone sentenced under the state's First Offender Act.

5. Low pay, split shifts and disruptive children have contributed to a national shortage of school bus drivers.

Standards not strict enough
Though the state doesn't require checks on driving records, it does strongly encourage local districts to pull records twice a year to look at infractions. Officials say what drivers do in their own cars is an important indicator of what they'll do in a school bus.

"I can guarantee you if someone is speeding in their automobile, you can put a clock on their bus and they're speeding," said Cobb County schools transportation director Carroll Pitts Jr.

The commercial license classification, which drivers earn by passing a knowledge and skills test, allows them to drive their school bus as well as their personal vehicle.

Georgia does not specify which types of infractions or criminal records should preclude a driver from sitting behind the wheel of a school bus.

In contrast, Virginia's Department of Motor Vehicles maintains a list of all school bus drivers and prohibits those convicted of two or more moving violations in a year from driving children.

"With drunk driving, a revocation or suspension, we actually pick up the phone and call the school district and tell them a notification letter is coming," Virginia's DMV spokeswoman Pam Goheen said.

Other states mandate background checks of driving histories. Mississippi requires checks once a year and offers local jurisdictions guidelines to help in evaluating driving records.

Most metro Atlanta school districts have no concrete, written policy for evaluating veteran bus drivers' driving records except to terminate those with recent DUIs. And not all counties have a written policy on how to evaluate potential hires, either.

The state will suspend a commercial driver's license for at least 60 days of those who commit two serious traffic infractions in a commercial vehicle within three years and suspend the license for at least 120 days of those who commit three serious traffic infractions in that same period. That doesn't apply to a bus driver's personal vehicle, however. Many transportation directors say school bus standards should be more strict than commercial driver's license rules.

In DeKalb County, new hires are subject to a clear standard, but the county's lack of a policy for evaluating veteran drivers has resulted in a staff with many driving infractions.

DeKalb's drivers have racked up 31 suspensions and 378 point violations in the past two years. That's nearly double the state's largest school district, Gwinnett County. And a third of its drivers have serious infractions on their driver's licenses, which is 55 percent more than Gwinnett.

DeKalb officials kept Osborne on the job even though he had four moving violations in five years.

Osborne sped 21 miles over the speed limit in a school zone while driving a school bus in 1996, and he backed up his bus on a one-way street and hit a car last May, records show. In the past five years, his license has been suspended four times -- three times because of insurance problems.

DeKalb's assistant director for safety and training, William J. Bast, recommended terminating Osborne in December after the district received its third citizen complaint, this time for running a red light, according to a county document. But Bast admitted he let the issue slide because he couldn't get in touch with Osborne and he was trying to hire more drivers.

For his part, Osborne says his driving history is "all little stupid things." The district should have given him more training instead of the boot, he says. He still wants to drive a bus.

"Overall, depending on how you would classify the word 'safe,' yeah, I'm a safe driver," Osborne said.

While Bast would not excuse Osborne's driving record, he explained every state in the country is facing a shortage of school bus drivers.

It's difficult to find good people willing to work part time for a top salary of about $15,600 per year, and on a split shift, said Dale Terry of the DeKalb County Bus Drivers Association. Health insurance is the main attraction.

"There's a lot of other jobs available and many kids are just terrible, and in many cases you get little support from the principal and the parents," he said.

But that's still no excuse for poor driving, he said. "I'm in favor of getting rid of these turkeys."

Limited access hides details
Despite their knowledge of some of Osborne's problems, DeKalb officials were surprised when they learned the length of his record.

"I wish I had a way of finding that out other than from a newspaper reporter," Bast said.

In Minnesota, school districts can pull up driver histories going back to the 1980s on a computer for a monthly fee, said Barb Anderson, the state's assistant director for pupil transportation.

But DeKalb couldn't see the total picture on Osborne. That's because, though the Georgia Department of Public Safety has information dating back to the 1970s, its system is set up to print only three- and seven-year driving histories.

Longer driving histories might help some school districts evaluate their drivers better. The Department of Public Safety can pull lifetime histories when a school district asks, said Ronny Johnson, the state's driver's license program director. But many school districts don't know that. Still, there's a difference of opinion on how far back school districts should look. Some experts question how much of drivers' pasts should haunt them.

Take the example of Monroe County substitute school bus driver Melvin Aldridge Lawrence, 53, who was cited four times for DUI in the 1980s. His license was revoked for several years for habitual traffic violations. But he has had a clean driving record for the last 14 years, according to state driving records.

"I know I made those mistakes back in the 1980s, but for the last 14 years, everything has been OK. I learned from that," Lawrence said. "That's all behind me."

In Cobb County, Lawrence wouldn't have been hired, said Pitts, the district's transportation director. Cobb does a preliminary seven-year check on a driver's record. Then it checks further -- as far as the state's computers will allow. That can include an entire lifetime.

"I wouldn't touch him," Pitts said of Lawrence. "That's too much liability. I don't care if 14 years have passed.

"If we were hauling logs down the road or Coca-Cola or something, I might be able to look the other way, but not with children. Now a lot of counties will, because they need drivers. [But] if anything happened, that's the first thing a lawyer would pull out, is that record, and it doesn't look good."

Others say those who have turned their lives around can be excellent employees.

"As a society, we need to say to ourselves, how far back do we need to check on someone to make sure they're a good clean citizen," said Charles Gauthier of the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services. "I wouldn't necessarily condemn people forever."

While many school administrators are willing to forgive DUIs in the distant past, most agree that when it comes to violent crimes or crimes against children, schools should look at a person's entire history.

Under a law that took effect last year, all school employees must submit to a criminal background check stretching as far back as state and federal records go. Districts have up to 200 days to finish the checks, which means that for up to seven months, bus drivers can train and drive their routes check-free.

Because the law is new, many districts have yet to figure out how or when they will search the backgrounds of veteran, non-teaching employees.

And there's another catch. Even if school districts run an employee's fingerprints through the computers at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the FBI, the district won't learn of crimes a potential hire committed if that person was sentenced under the state's First Offender Act.

For example, the Journal-Constitution/WSB investigation found that school districts wouldn't know that 85 school bus drivers served prison time or probation for offenses such as child molestation, robbery and aggravated assault. That's because those sentenced under the First Offender Act who have served their time and followed the terms of their sentence can wipe their slate clean. The intent of the First Offender Act is to give someone who has made one "mistake" a fresh start.

In those cases, the computer won't pick up their crime when an employer runs a pre-employment check.

First offenders are not considered to have been convicted, so they can truthfully say on an application that they have not been convicted of a felony.

That means that if DeKalb County had checked former bus driver Carey Ward's background, the district would have been unaware that he served prison time on a child molestation charge.

Ward was sentenced under the First Offender Act. But if the district had checked with the Department of Corrections or Fulton County Superior Court, it would have found his arrest. Since 1990, the courts have been required to maintain a copy of all records pertaining to first offenders for public inspection.

Ward began driving a school bus for Fulton County schools in 1997, a year after his probation ended. Then he was hired by DeKalb, where he drove during the 1999-2000 school year. During his tenure with DeKalb, Ward was arrested and later sentenced to a year of probation on a misdemeanor charge of simple battery. He resigned for "personal reasons," his personnel folder says.

System bogs down
Even when a school district does everything that it should, transportation directors still might not know their veteran drivers have a suspended license or a history of worse offenses.

Commercial drivers, which include school bus drivers, truckers and others, are supposed to inform their employer if they receive a ticket or if their license is suspended, said Sam McCullough, director of pupil transportation for the state Department of Education.

Yet when the Journal-Constitution called 18 school districts regarding 21 bus drivers who were on the road with suspended licenses earlier this month, it was news to them. In most cases, the driver didn't pay their insurance premium or had changed insurance companies.

Another problem is paper traffic tickets are slow to make it into the system. "In some rural counties, where the probate judge is the traffic judge, sometimes it may be six months before they send it in," Georgia State Patrol Maj. Arthur White said.

State Patrol spokesman Jim Shuler said the agency's data processing and reporting systems are antiquated and need to be updated. Ideally, each county, city and insurance company would report violations electronically.

"Georgia is still several years away from that ideal situation," Shuler said. "Instead of dropping boxes and boxes of documents on our doorstep, they could enter it into the system themselves."

But that would mean each county and city would have to spend money on new computer programs that would be compatible with the state's, and they probably would have to hire more data entry clerks, Shuler said.

In the meantime, unless a driver admits a problem or colleagues report the driver, school officials won't know whether the driver has any serious violations.

"The key to the school system is, they have to monitor the drivers continuously," White said.

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