Archive for June, 2010

Just this once, I’ll preface this by saying:  ”They don’t call me truless for nothing.”  Stuck with this handle, I suppose I should relish the opportunity it gives me to color outside the lines.  So are they?  Yellow-bus drivers?  Worthless, I mean.  Driving a school bus is surely a job should matter – given both the cargo value (our kids)  and the industry (education).

Recently, I volunteered a second-grade field trip.  This was an in-town excursion that required a drive of about six miles.  At the appointed time, 250 students and 40 parent volunteers gathered at the bus “circle” where we were promptly informed that the bus drivers thought the departure was 30 minutes later.   I chalk it up to school-district buffoonery.  Eventually the buses arrive – each captained by a schlub in an official “wear-what-you-woke-up-in” uniform.  Most importantly, though we’re barely into the 21st century, Bernie, our driver, had his crumpled print-out from Map Quest in hand — no GPS here.   Would he actually refer to the thing while driving with one hand from time to time?  Would he get lost?  Would he be late to pick the kids up a couple hours later?  What the heck does this have to do with TruCorps?  Are these rhetorical questions?

Rhetorical?  No.   Others in order: no, no, no and here comes what, I think, Bernie has to do with TruCorps.   As an interested party that day, I was surely ready to brand Bernie and his bus band buddies “worthless” – the look, the lateness, the lousy printouts.   For parents of most riders, though, the drivers are merely invisible – their level of faith in Bernie turning simply upon the uneventful goings and comings of their kids.  If a parent might be inclined to press, faith can be restored or enhanced with easy access to typical data from industry, federal or a variety of local-government and non-profit sources about the extreme safety of these yellow behemoths.

So here are the broad strokes as to why Bernie just can’t be worthless – but often times just gets treated like he is.   He matters because over 23,000,000 of our kids ride these buses every day.  And they ride them not just to and fro, but to over 140,000 U.S. elementary and secondary schools.   Schools matter.   Everything about them matters.  You can debate which jobs within them are more important than others.  But the drivers actually have daily responsibility for getting them there safely – and managing them along the way.  And they are asked to do it for around $16 an hour.

This is no polemic about low pay or whether we value educators and education in general.  It’s a polemic about jobs like Bernie’s mattering.  Not just because our kids and schools matter.  But because the “mere” driver contributes mightily to all of it.   Want to do work that matters?   Work somewhere that matters.  Follow Bernie.  He cares.  He matters.