The kids call him “Mr. Bill,” an Addison Mizner Elementary School bus driver who says he knows the secret to maneuvering his way along South Florida roads with 65 children fidgeting behind him.
He lays down the laws of the bus on the first day of school: Stay in your seats, keep your hands, feet and spit balls to yourself, speak softly. He pulls off the road at the slightest infraction.
And – the clincher – he bribes his young charges with candy on holidays.
On buses that are not air conditioned, where students are crammed two or three in a seat and the heat is sometimes stifling, drivers must count on their own strategies and help from individual schools to discipline students.
“It’s the way you handle kids that counts,” driver William “Mr. Bill” Nobel said earlier this week outside the Boca Raton school.
Schools across the county have devised bus discipline programs.
Some ask ROTC students to ride buses with younger children. Others solicit help from parent volunteers. Seating plans are common.
Still, Nobel said the job for new, inexperienced drivers can be difficult. And dangerous.
Nobel wore a gray and yellow bow on his shirt this week to pay tribute to Fontaine Watkins, an Omni Middle School driver who died early Saturday morning of heart failure, hours after he fought on his bus with four students.
The medical examiner determined Watkins’ death was unrelated to the fight, but Palm Beach County school officials are stepping up security on buses.
Watkins had been driving a bus for one year.
New drivers are often given the worst routes, Nobel said, meaning assignments in bad neighborhoods or at schools known to have lax discipline policies. Routes are distributed based on seniority.
“The district needs to teach new drivers how to get along with children,” said Nobel, a driver for six years. “And the bad children should be kept off the bus and left off.”
At Addison Mizner, students are warned after one bus referral not to make the same mistake again.
After the second referral, students are told they can take the bus to school but cannot take it home, said Principal Helga Finnigan. They serve a one-hour detention and must be picked up by a family member. After that, more detentions, harsher punishments.
Addison Mizner officials also use a point system for good behavior on buses, similar to programs in the classrooms. Students are rewarded with certificates and ice cream parties.
Still, on several of Addison Mizner’s five buses, students are packed on the seats. The student limit per bus based on federal and manufacturer standards is 65 children, or three students per seat.
“That number of students on a bus is just not realistic to what we are dealing with, and the heat doesn’t help much,” said Finnigan. “It encourages tempers to flare.”
At a Carver Estates bus stop in Delray Beach, grandmother Doris Lemone wields a walking cane while lining children up every morning at 7:15 a.m and warning them to behave.
“Half of the kids on this bus just run their mouths,” she said on Wednesday morning as the children stood in line. “I bring my stick out here and I’ll bop them if they don’t behave.”
The bus lumbered down the road then, and children quietly filed on while parents watched.
But by the time the bus drove into the middle school’s parking lot 10 minutes later, the young driver could be heard yelling, “No pushing!” “No pushing!” “Hey you guys in the back, sit down!” The children didn’t seem to hear her, or if they did, they didn’t listen.
“Get out of my way,” one boy pushed as he tumbled off the bus and charged into school.
In another bus, veteran driver Alberta Morris was fanning herself to cool off from the heat.
“You just have to know how to carry on with them,” said Morris, who has been driving school buses for 20 years. “I don’t give referrals. I’ve learned how to handle the kids. It’s all part of the job.”
