ECTOR COUNTY, Texas — For bus drivers in the area, driving school busses has become a contentious job.
“This year seems to be worse as we have more and more students.”
This is what John Huffman, a bus driver who routes bus schedules with Ector County ISD, says about the behavior of kids who ride the bus home.
It's not just ECISD. Parents of students at both ECISD and Midland ISD have been upset at the rising number of unruly student behavior on school buses.
Children reportedly get out of their seats, yell across the bus, walk up and down the aisle, hide under the bus and throw things at each other.
“You’re driving a forty-foot bus. Then you’ve got these kids who are climbing over the seats, getting under their seats, climbing up the seats, trying to run up and down the aisles and play with each other on the bus,” Hoffman said. "Then we have to try and keep them in their seats while driving."
Buses have security cameras installed in them, so if a situation breaks out amongst the students, school officials can bring up recordings of what happened to discipline troublemakers.
Bus drivers still have other methods of keeping an eye on rowdy children.
“As we look into the mirror, we’re trying to tell the kids to stay seated," Huffman said. "If for whatever reason they are not, we pull over to a safe area, pulling off the road to a safe area and get the kids to sit down or stop fighting or whatever it is they’re doing.”
Sometimes, it's not enough. Huffman recalled an incident in the past where he had to drive students back to school after one particular student threw something at him.
“Whenever I was driving out of Nimitz a couple years ago, I had a full bottle of water thrown at me and hit me in the back of the head," Huffman said. "I’m on Eighth Street… so the only thing I could do was turn around, take them back to Nimitz and have the principal take them off the bus.”
Even though drivers get paid nearly $21.00 per hour, there is still a shortage of drivers across Ector County and Midland.
Part of it is because of the behavior of kids who take the bus home.
"We get drivers in, we put them on the bus, two or three days later, they quit. They just can't handle the kids," Huffman said. "We've got another couple of buses that are so packed and the kids... they don't listen. They're loud, they won't stay seated and the drivers just can't handle it."