Beginning of school year marks start of bus battles

By Bill Donovan
Staff Writer

GALLUP — It's the start of another school year and the local school officials are once again dealing with overcrowding and rowdiness on school buses.

"This happens every year at the start of the school year," said Joe Henley, who oversees the district's 132 buses.

The overcrowding, in many cases, is a matter of human behavior. Until they start making friends, kids do not like to share seats.

"I most cases, the overcrowding can be solved by just having the kids slide over," Henley said.

But sometimes it's a case of too many students and not enough seats, which is what is happening in the Western Skies area of town.

If it's a case of major overcrowding, the district will just add another bus but usually the problem can be corrected by finding a bus driver in an adjacent route who has space on his bus adding an extra stop or two to ease the pressure on the overcrowded bus route.

The district is watching carefully what's happening with a new mobile home park that is in the process of opening up in the west side of town.

It's not filled yet and the school buses are able to handle the new students without facing overcrowding but Henley said that may change as the park fills up.

As for rowdiness, that again is more of a problem in the beginning of the school year than later.

As drivers get to know the names of the students on their buses, Henley said, they're better able to assert control because they are able to identify the problem kids and report them by name to the principal of their school.

There's an occasional fight, Henley said, but drivers have been trained on how to handle these kinds of problems using the old "divide and conquer" approach, keeping them in separate sections of the bus.

The transportation department also has the use in the morning of three security guards so the district policy is to rotate them over the various routes where rowdiness is a problem, Henley said.

"We're very fortunate in that we don't have a major problem with rowdiness," Henley said.

One area that still remains a problem, however, is the continuing rise in gas prices.

With the most buses and longest bus routes of any district in the state, McKinley County finds itself each year trying to stay within a gasoline budget. Last year, it managed to survive only with a subsidy from the state and Henley said while there are no problems now, the district may be facing problems again next March.

One problem the district has faced in the past won't be a factor this year bus breakdowns.

"The conditions of the buses is better this year than it has ever been," he said, thanks to the purchase of new buses over the past few years.

The district still has a few 1993 models still in service but Henley said that these are only used as backup in case one of the newer buses needs to be serviced or is being used for some other purpose.