Every time I pass the Chase bank on the corner of Old Nyack Turnpike and Main Street in Spring Valley, I remember being on the school bus at the age of 5 looking at this big building from the window. It was a long way to school, but we had bus monitors to look out for the younger students. I later learned that this was a privilege offered to select eighth graders by the school principal, as private school students without IEP’s were not mandated to have bus aides from the district to do the job.

            As I got older, those bus monitors chosen were two of the worst bullies I have ever encountered. It was during those years that I kept my face turned towards the window of the bus in an attempt to block out their hurtful words. The memory of those bus rides stay with me still, even though one of them called me to apologize a few years back. She said she could not imagine having her children go through the agony that she put me through, and sincerely apologized for the torment that she caused me back then.

            As a parent of children in the private schools in Rockland County today, I can sadly report that they too were bullied verbally and physically on the bus. This makes me wonder why we allow our children, our most precious cargo, to be bussed to school and back without appropriate adult supervision. Personally, there was a period of time when I did not allow my children take the bus to school and back as I did not feel that they were ready at the time to handle the bullying that occurs on the bus each day.

            In my conversations with other mothers, I understand that many of the private schools in Rockland County have their own buses and bus monitors, and that parents who send their children to those schools pay an extra fee for that service. However, those drivers and monitors do not receive the same high quality training offered by the buses contracted by the public school system.

In a conversation with T.M., former bus driver for the Student Bus Company, a public school bus company, I learned that training for safety is mandatory for all bus drivers, as they are responsible for our children during the ride to or from school. She said that bus drivers would pull over if the safety of the children on the bus is compromised, and will only continue driving once safety concerns are addressed.

            While I am appreciative of the services that the public school busses offer to the private schools, I am constantly concerned about the safety of the children. There was a period of time when one of the children in my sons’ school was mandated to have a paraprofessional on the bus with him, and the bus ride was extremely safe for all children as a result during that time. As things will happen, that child did not attend the school for too long a time so the paraprofessional on the bus was not there for long. 

In a conversation with former bus driver, Hindy Golob, I learned that bus drivers can keep the children engaged and safe if they have the proper skills to do so. Hindy drove children from diverse backgrounds in the public school system for several years, many of whom didn’t like to read. She would keep the children engaged by playing games with them such as naming a city in the United States and asking them to identify which state the city is in.

She told the children that in order to be able to get a job as adults and avoid ending up in jail, they needed to read, and not just read for school assignments, but also read for personal enjoyment. Several years later, Hindy met one of those children, grown up at the time, in Walmart. He told her that due to her positive influence on the bus, he and all his classmates had graduated from high school, gone to college, and held good jobs. Hindy strongly feels that a bus driver can not only keep students engaged and safe on the bus, but also have a positive impact on them for life if the right approach is used.

            She reported that the children on her buses never bullied each other because she took it upon herself to keep them engaged and safe during the ride. She informed me that when there is no monitor on the bus, as is often the case, the bus driver needs to take charge of the children on the bus to ensure that no bullying happens. She said that most likely when I was younger and on a large bus, it is possible that the driver didn’t hear the verbal bullying that was going on. However, she said that I definitely should have informed him so that he could immediately address it.

            She commented that there was one instance when she was asked to drive children from a private school who were very rowdy, and she therefore pulled to the side of the road until they had calmed down and were ready for her to drive them. This happened to my children once as well; the driver pulled over and waited until the children were ready for him to resume his route.

            I am hopeful that drivers in both public and private bus companies today are aware of the responsibility and privilege that they have to be entrusted with our children on the way to and from school, and that they do whatever they can to ensure the safety of all of them.