Kinda figured that.
Where I grew up our drivers were well known members of the community and the school owned and maintained the buses.
One of the great advantages in growing up in a somewhat isolated rural community were the emotional investments. We saw everybody who worked at our school year round pretty much every day. We went sledding in bus driver Ruby's back yard. Bus driver Phoebe was my best friend's aunt. The Ackermans were the lunch lady and janitor, they ran a local vegetable stand. Two of my teachers were at my grandmother and mom's funerals. They've both become family members as our families have shrunk.
The point being that a bad bus driver or teacher can't exist for long in such an environment.
Well, my neighborhood wasn't rural, but everyone knew everyone else. My parents didn't have to worry about the school
bus drivers or the school teachers. And the neighbors were like part of our family and we were theirs. People looked out not only for their own children, but everyone else's. If a bus driver was unsafe or a teacher made inappropriate advances to a child, you better believe the school district would catch hell from a lot of irate people.
We didn't even have school buses until I was in ninth grade. We walked to school. Even after the district started offering bus service, I still walked to school. My best friend took the bus. Most of the time I would get to school long before she did. And I walked even in winter with snow up to my eyeballs. Nowadays, thanks to liberal social engineering, kids have to be transported to a school miles from home when there might be a perfectly good school nearby. Probably among the reasons why so many of them are obese and/or such delicate little snowflakes.
