By Elliott Brack, editor and publisher | Each school day, over 1,600 Gwinnett School buses transport 130,000 students twice a day. The Gwinnett system is the third largest transporter of students in the country. Their daily trip total is like driving 30 round trips to Los Angeles each day.
Danny Jardine, chief operations officer, adds another way to look at it: “Like driving to the moon and back every four days.”
This year as the 1,655 drivers gathered before school started at Hebron Baptist Church for a State Department of Education mandated driver seminar, two drivers were surprised, when they were chosen from among the many drivers who had no accidents last year. Each was to receive a new school bus to drive. In effect, Gwinnett school bus drivers are safe drivers. Usually 96 percent of the bus drivers complete the school year without an accident.
Allen
One of these drivers who got a new bus is Sonya Allen, who drives a special education bus to Ferguson Elementary and Berkmar High Schools, making two round trips daily. The other is Julie Radford, who makes three round trips a day in the Grayson area, hauling students of Starling Elementary, Couch Middle, and Grayson High Schools.
Soon after getting her new bus, however, Sonya Allen was T-boned by a driver who was “flying down Carter Drive as I approached Berkmar High on Pleasant Hill Road and ran right into the side of my bus full speed,” she says. She had five kids on the bus, “but they were higher on the bus than his car was and the kids weren’t hurt. That’s the first thing I thought about.” The other driver was charged in the incident.
Allen, who lives in Stone Mountain since she was small, is originally from Toombs County, has been driving a bus for 10 years. “It was my first accident. I’ve never caused one.” She likes driving, and enjoys the parents of the kids she drives. Each day she leaves her home about 5 a.m. and finishes about 8:30 a.m. She returns to pick up the elementary kids at 1:50 p.m., and finishes her driving about 4:15 p.m. “This work gives me time to do some things in the middle of the day. Sometimes I take a nap at home.”
Radford
Ironically, though promised, Julie Radford hasn’t seen a new bus yet. Officials say her new bus is expected here “soon.” Radford is originally from St. Louis, Mo. She and her husband live between Lawrenceville and Grayson. She was told by a neighbor about a job driving a bus route. “I like the flexibility of it. And I can be with my daughters, Emily and Ava, all the time before I drop them off at school, instead of having them in day care. We leave just before 6 a.m., and I’m done about 9:20 a.m. Then I go back to driving at 1:30 p.m., and home about 5:20 p.m.
Radford drives defensively. “My eyes are always looking everywhere to try and predict what drivers might do. One guy would have T-boned me the other day on Pinehurst Road, for he was going too fast, and though it was my turn to go, I didn’t. He ran right in front of me. You have to drive defensively all the time.”
Congratulations not only to Sonya Allen and Julie Radford, but to all those drivers who safely look after Gwinnett students on their routes each day.
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