Kathy Zimmerman drives the Athena-Weston School District Bingham route, one of Oregon’s rural routes where students are few and far between and the roads are a challenge. (Photo by Jake Arnold, OSBA)
Kindergartener Hope Tyer spends about three hours a day on an Athena-Weston School District bus, starting at 6:25 a.m.
“I say I don’t want to go to school,” she said. “I just want to sleep. I always growl at mom.”
But a long bus ride is just one of the prices you pay for living far from town, said Hope’s mother, Emily.
School districts pay a price as well to gather and return their far-flung students. Nichole Schott, president of the OSBA Rural School Board Members Caucus, said busing is a major cost and logistical issue for rural school districts, sometimes in ways that aren’t always clear to others.
Athena-Weston wrestles with familiar rural commuting challenges that would be outlandish to some metro schools, such as hard-charging log truck drivers, large animals on the road, and breakdowns where there is no cell service. At the same time, the district faces hurdles such as a shortage of bus drivers that bedevil most districts.
Athena-Weston has four routes with around 30 children on each. Two handle the children in the neighboring towns of Athena and Weston, and two reach the spread-out homes along the Blue Mountains northeast of Pendleton. The district had five routes until 2022, but was unable to find five drivers.
Julie Schroeder, the interim transportation supervisor, has done what she can to attract drivers. Beginning drivers earn $20 an hour, a competitive wage for the area, and receive paid health insurance.
Kathy Zimmerman said she took the job 10 years ago for the insurance. She has been driving the Bingham route, the district’s longest at around 140 miles a day, for seven years.
With modern buses’ power controls and improved handling, guiding a bus isn’t so much a test of brute strength but of alertness and caution. Zimmerman’s route snakes up narrow and twisty byways as it jumps back and forth between pot-holed pavement and rutted gravel. In winter, the bus is covered in mud; in late spring and early fall, it is layered in dust.
Schroeder, when looking for after-market parts to protect the buses’ undercarriages from kicked-up rocks, was told by the manufacturer not to take them off pavement. The district just paved its bus lot last year.
Only one of Athena-Weston’s routes is entirely on pavement, and that one has snow and ice six months of the year.
Bus mechanics are hard to find in rural Oregon, and Athena-Weston isn’t large enough for its own maintenance facility. Routine work is done in nearby Milton-Freewater, but larger jobs go to a truck facility in Pendleton. If a bus breaks down, the tow bill can run $1,000, Schroeder said.
Rural areas’ rough roads and long distances increase maintenance costs and shorten bus lives.
On the Bingham route, a 2020 flood washed out the bridge at Thorn Hollow Road, forcing the bus to cross the Umatilla River on North Cayuse Road to the west and adding 40 miles a day. It is unclear when the bridge will be replaced – probably years away.
The route’s blind curves made Zimmerman nervous at first, but now she is used to it. She said the children are both the hardest and the best part of the job. On a recent run, she had to tell them to sit down repeatedly and settle down, but they gave her friendly waves and hugs as they got off.
Schroeder said bus drivers’ days are usually filled with fun and touching interactions, but media horror stories have scared potential drivers away.
“The public thinks all these kids are monsters,” Schroeder said. “In reality, the majority of these kids are good kids.”
The split schedule is another turn-off for potential drivers. Zimmerman starts her day around 5:30 a.m. and ends around 5:30 p.m. with about a 5-hour break in the middle most days.
Zimmerman used to own an auto body shop with her husband and would work there in the middle of the day. She has since sold the shop and is retiring from bus driving at the end of the school year. The district has not found a replacement.
Schroeder said another strategy they have used attract drivers is to offer part-time work elsewhere with schools, such as instructional assistant or maintenance person.
Schroeder often fills in as a driver, but that won’t be an option next year when she moves out of the district.
Schroeder actually retired in 2022. She stayed on to help the transition, but the new supervisor left for another job in 2023 and Schroeder was pulled back in. Schroeder will work remotely next school year until the district can find her successor.
Schools can outsource their transportation, but Schott said rural districts are increasingly running their own buses, partly because big corporations don’t seem to want to take on small schools. She said paperwork requirements and regulations for state transportation funds create extra burdens for rural schools, though.
“The rules were made for the people in cities and not for places like us,” said Schott, a Condon School Board member.
A recent Oregon bill set stricter standards for diesel engine emissions, raising particular challenges for small and rural districts where other bus power types are often impractical. Supply chain and budget cycle issues made it impossible to update their buses by the law’s 2025 deadline, though. During the 2024 short session, OSBA helped put forward a bill that gives school districts until Jan. 1, 2026 to update their fleets.
Athena-Weston School Board Chair Marty Graham said the district is fortunate to have an in-house transportation department that can respond to schools’ needs, such as long trips in the middle of the day to sports or job fairs.
Graham said legislators need to listen to rural and eastern Oregon superintendents and transportation directors.
“It is remarkable what our kids go through to get to school,” she said.
On a typical afternoon, the first students don’t get off the Bingham bus until about 45 minutes after they board.
Schroeder said parents don’t complain about the route lengths, though.
Hope Tyer is in the first group to load at the elementary school, and her home is the last stop on the route. She spends at least 90 minutes each morning and each afternoon wiggling around in a bus seat.
“I’m grateful that we have buses that run all the way out here since we live so far out of town,” said Hope’s mother, “but I do feel bad for her that she basically works a 10-hour day as a 5-year-old.”
– Jake Arnold, OSBA
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