DERBY — Jodee Dalton has seen a few younger students shed tears as her Derby school bus pulls up in the morning.
Her pep talk goes something like this:
“You’re on here with your friends. I know it’s early, and it’s hard to go. We’re buddies.”
Most of the time, it’s the students who keep Dalton in high spirits.
“I think when you get older, you tend to forget what the inherent joys of childhood are. Kids laugh all the time. Everything’s funny to them, everything’s silly to them. I learn from them. I hope they learn from me. I think being around these kids gives me a better outlook on everything.”
Dalton is one of 29 bus and paratransit drivers who are working past retirement age for the Derby disrict. After retiring from the Kansas Air National Guard, she attended culinary school and worked for a caterer. Then the pandemic came along.
She started driving a van for the schools, transporting kids who live outside district lines. She was urged to get her commercial license so that she could drive full-size school busses. “Every district everywhere is always looking for school bus drivers,” she said.
She studied up on general knowledge of commercial vehicles to pass the written test, learned how to operate air brakes and got her learner’s permits, which allowed her to drive with a licensed CDL operator. She learned to inspect a bus — a daily requirement on the job. “You go around the whole bus and you inspect everything,” she sad. “Make sure all the lights work, the tread on the tires is good, wiring in the electrical system looks good, suspension looks good, emergency doors and windows open and close properly. Most people fail that (inspection test) the first time.”
She practiced straight-line backing, parallel parking, offset parking and other techniques. Drivers train at least two weeks in Garrett Park on the south end of town before taking their Kansas DMV driving test in the Twin Lakes Shopping Center parking lot.
Dalton filled in for other drivers at first, which she called “the worst job in the world. You’re out in the dark trying to find these locations. If the locations are corners, Google doesn’t like corners, it can’t find them. So that’s a lot of fun — a little stressful.”
This year is her third with the same route, which is off Hydraulic south of 79th Street, and many of the same students. It makes a difference.
“Oh yeah, a hundred percent,” she said. “It’s a whole lot easier to call them out if they’re doing something stupid. You know them, they know you. They know your expectations.”
Dalton is up before dawn most days. If it’s wintry, she warms up the bus and scrapes off its windows. After inspecting the vehicle, she’s usually out of the parking lot by 6:30 a.m. Her route has about 45 kids and 15 scheduled stops, which usually take her about an hour and 15 minutes to complete.
Dalton puts herself in the lenient category of bus drivers. She’ll let her passengers eat, for instance, as long as they clean up after themselves. “I have a trash can at the front and back. We’re not moving until the bus is clear.”
Youngsters “perform up or down to your level of expectations,” she believes — although that’s hard for one age group.
“Middle school kids — there’s all kind of stuff going on there. Over-medication, under-medication, hormones. Trying to fit in.”
Indeed, Dalton discovered there’s “a whole different vocabulary of middle school kids, and we don’t know any of it.” A middle school teacher tipped her off to a website that explains middle school vernacular. (There are several.)
Dalton clearly loves the give-and-take with students who pile onto her bus eager to talk about what they did the weekend before or what they’re looking forward to that night.
“Little kids talk a lot more than their parents know they talk. So I know a lot of really interesting things about families. I had one little girl, she said, ‘I know everything I’m getting for Christmas.’ I said, ‘How do you know?’ She said, ‘’Cause I snooped in my mom’s phone.’ I said, ‘I’m going to call your mom and tell her.’ Her eyes got enormous and this look of terror came into them.”
Dalton did not carry out the threat.
She gives her riders Spanish phrases to learn, like “Estoy aburrido” (for “I’m bored”). She plays “Dogglyand” — hip-hop versions of kids’ songs and nursery rhymes created by the rapper Snoop Dog — through the bus’ sound system in the morning. “It talks about ‘I’m smart enough. I’m good enough.’ The older kids kind of roll their eyes. The younger kids kind of like it.”
“In the afternoon, I let them pick some stuff,” she said. “It’s all gotta be PG, though.”
She has most of the day to herself before returning for her afternoon route. Driving to extracurricular activities is on a voluntary basis.
“I’ve been to the State Fair, the Zoo, Cowtown, Exploration Place, Tanganyika — all those kinds of places. Pumpkin patches are really big in October.
“There’s just always something different. Last year, we took middle school students on a tour to different elementary schools, and (they) sang for the kids.”
That, by the way, led to an incident in which the remains of an ice cream cone were left on the floor of her bus. She emailed the students’ teacher.
“A week later, I come in and I have a giant stack of pictures that all of these middle schoolers have colored for my bus. I took all of them and put them all over the ceiling of my bus.”
Dalton appreciates the part-time job’s perks, which include a membership to the Derby Recreation Center and options for health insurance. But mostly, it’s being around students like the little girl who was happy to see Dalton and her school bus return for another year.
“She was like, ‘Miss Jodee,’ I missed you.’ They’re just a lot of fun. They’re joyful, and it can’t help but bring you up.”
Contact Joe Stumpe at joe@theactiveage.com.
