At least 15 days this year, 12-year-old Terasa Grayer has stood on her porch, waited up to 3 hours for her school bus to arrive, only to turn around and go back inside, spending the day at home rather than in class.
Sometimes, when the bus does come, it is so late that Terasa, who is hearing impaired and attends Ericson Elementary School, 3600 W. 5th Ave., doesn`t arrive at school until midmorning and misses speech therapy or reading or math.
”It`s getting somewhat better,” her mother, Bobbie Hines, said. ”But it`s just been terrible. When they don`t come, I can`t get her there. She`s hearing impaired and needs all the help she can get. She misses out on so much.”
Last week Terasa was lucky, she went to school all five days. The week before she missed one day because her bus did not come.
And Terasa is not alone. On any given school day, some of the buses scheduled to pick up the 43,000 Chicago children who are bused arrive late or not at all, frustrating parents, teachers, principals, bus companies, school officials and even pupils. Approximately 10 percent of the city`s
schoolchildren are bused.
In a year that has been heralded for its attempts to improve the city`s public schools, bus service problems-some of which have been dangerous and deadly-have continued to crop up throughout the school system.
The problems have caused two dozen parents, including Hines, all of whom have special-education children, to join together and turn to Protection and Advocacy, Inc., a nonprofit agency that protects the legal rights of persons with disabilities.
Some principals are encouraging their local school councils to tackle the issue; a committee of North Side parents says it is now working on transportation reform and bus safety. And school officials and bus companies say they are working to correct the problems. All say the bus service system is one that ultimately must be revamped.
”There are some wonderful drivers out there considering how they`re compensated,” said Thelma Lewis-DeMet, a parent who sits on the North Side committee. ”But there are also a lot of drivers out there who don`t care. It is a tough situation.”
Recently 16 bus drivers, some who had previous criminal records, were indicted on charges of selling illegal drugs while picking up and delivering pupils. An 8-year-old girl, the only pupil not wearing her seat belt, was killed when her school bus was rammed by a drunken driver, hurling her out of the bus and eventually pinning her underneath a car when the school minibus overturned.
A 9-year-old girl died after being struck by a CTA bus as she crossed a busy intersection after getting off her school bus. Last week, a driver frustrated by a route she did not know, returned seven pupils to their closed school and abandoned them there by driving away.
”It is really unbelievable,” said Gisela Maso, a parent. ”Every time you put the kid on the bus, you are risking his life. You don`t know what`s going to happen.”
There isn`t just one cause for the problems. Bus companies-earning $70 million in contracts from the school system annually-say they cannot attract enough drivers for the part-time $22-a-day jobs. They complain of high turnover and confusing routes created by the school system.
”There is a shortage of part-time workers, period,” said Phillip Paige, owner of Paige Transportation Co. on the South Side. The company is one of 32 that serves Chicago. ”We have a rough job in dealing with the children, their parents, the schools and the streets of Chicago.
”I feel really bad because everyone is out there pointing the fingers at the drivers and what the press really needs to understand is that 95 percent of people out here driving deliver the children safely.”
Their drivers complain of ill-behaved children who don`t stay in their seats, unbuckle their seat belts and often arrive late at their bus stops. Drivers also complain of buses that don`t always start.
School officials say that most of the problems have been concentrated on the North and West Sides and mainly involve two companies-Willett Motor Coach Co., 4552 W. Patterson Ave., and Rapid Bus Co., 4654 W. Washington Blvd. They say that most of the problems are on 30 or 40 routes that serve a little more than 500 pupils, less than 1 percent of the pupils who ride school buses each day.
Transportation chief Robert Johnson said the school system assessed $60,000 in penalties against companies that did not perform well in September, including $25,000 levied against Willett and $19,000 against Rapid.
The assessments are based on weekly reports given by bus monitors, part-time school workers who log the arrival and departure times of buses. These reports were created during the 1987-88 school year to improve bus service.
Willett holds the largest contract with the school system, transporting the majority of the 11,000 special-education pupils bused each day. Some of those pupils have been particularly hard-hit by bus problems because many need the familiarity of the same driver to feel comfortable, parents and school officials said.
”Willett historically has been one of the most reliable firms, but not this year,” Johnson said. ”We believe that they probably overextended themselves. They had the buses but not the manpower. This has been a real tough experience for us.”
Bill Hood, president of Willett, conceded that the company, which runs more than 670 routes, faced problems of attracting qualified workers.
”I have been here 18 years and have seen it go from a very well-run system down to these part-time drivers,” Hood said. ”You are going to see the industry take a hard look and school districts prepared to pay more for transportation. Otherwise, you don`t have enough qualified people behind the wheel.”
One problem with drivers, the parents and school officials said, is that many have not been checked for criminal records and are not tested for drug or alcohol use. According to the bus contracts, it is up to the bus companies to screen, train and test their drivers, Johnson said.
While controversy continues over whether school districts or the companies should be doing background checks, a new law, which takes effect Jan. 1, calls for drug and alcohol testing of drivers.
Meanwhile, parents such as Maso, whose 14-year-old son, Jimmy, attends the Rimland School for Autistic Children in Evanston, wait each day for the school bus.
”This isn`t just a transportation issue, it`s the damage to the education of the kids,” Maso said. ”My son is autistic and he has very little speech but he learns to wait outside for the bus and recognize the driver. That may sound like nothing, but for an autistic child it is a big accomplishment.
”But the bus is late and the driver is different. Now he refuses to wait outside for the bus. Something he has learned to do for himself he has now lost.”
