We school bus drivers were in a league of our own.

Literally.

Other students at Jesse O. Sanderson High School joined clubs and teams: the debate team, the drama club, the chess club. And then there were the cliques: the jocks, the freaks, the cheerleaders.

If you drove a school bus, you were in the bus drivers club.

We were a special group. We came together from all across the school and drew our numbers from among the jocks, the freaks, and the … well, maybe not from the cheerleaders.

School Bus Drivers 1973, high school yearbook

It wasn’t as if we hung out together or met up for special sessions or parties. Often, we’d see one another sauntering across the parking lot to or from our buses. But for the most part, we just went about our business like the individuals we were.

I started driving because of Loretta Humphrey, because I thought she looked so cool behind the wheel of her 1955 Chevy. After I joined the bus drivers league in 1972, my best friends, Molly and Carey signed up for the 1974 school year.

We each drove different routes, of course, and only occasionally saw each other on the road—honking or nodding when we did—but occasionally we’d drive our bus to one another’s house after finishing our routes.

School bus gathering, after the route, with Molly Young and Allen Campbell.

I doubt the neighbors were pleased to have 2-3 giant yellow buses outside their houses. But they never complained. And we never stayed long.

None of us made much money. I can’t remember what the take home was, but minimum wage at the time was $1.45 an hour. The best part of the job was having transportation to school. And being in control.

And, being cool.

We all missed homeroom and first period classes because of our routes, and we were released from our last class fifteen minutes early.

We’d duly climb into our mammoth machines and pull out of the parking lot one right after the other, some heading to the same schools to pick up the middle schoolers and cart them back to their neighborhoods.

Now adays when I tell people I drove a school bus—as a high school student—they are astonished.

“That’s so dangerous!”

Maybe it was dangerous. But it wasn’t uncommon.

In the 1940s, due to the loss of “manpower” during the war, students commonly drove school buses. The practice continued afterwards as well to meet the sharp increase in school enrollments due to the postwar population boom. At one time, more than twenty states allowed students under 18 to drive school buses. Wyoming even allowed students as young as fifteen behind the wheel.

In 1966 Congress amended the Fair Labor Standards Act prohibiting people under the age of 18 from driving school buses. North Carolina, South Carolina, and a few other states protested, since almost 80% of their school bus driving labor force was made up of 16- and 17-year-olds. These states were allowed to continue the practice until 1988.

According to an article in the News and Observer by T. Keung Hui, when the U.S. Labor Department finally ended the exemption, it cost North Carolina more than 3,500 bus drivers.

I know statistically the number of moving violations and accidents was higher among younger bus drivers. Aside from the Cadillac I hit on my first day driving, I didn’t have any accidents and neither did any of my friends or any of the student drivers in my cohort.

My younger brother drove a school bus when he got his license, and he was a safe driver, too.

I am glad I lived at a time when students could be trusted with this assignment. Still, if I had a child in school, I’d probably be uncomfortable with a student driver…unless it was me!

Read more about student bus drivers at:
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article278074987.html#storylink=cpy

https://www.edweek.org/education/use-of-students-as-school-bus-drivers-declining/1985/02