Countdown to Opening Day : In Garden Grove, Schools Bustle with Training, Cleanup

Kids aren’t the only ones bracing themselves for the first day of school this week.

In the Garden Grove Unified School District, schools that were little livelier than ghost towns during the summer have in the past week become bustling campuses as thousands of people continue to prepare for Thursday’s opening day. Custodians buffed floors. Gardeners mowed lawns and pulled up a summer’s worth of weeds. Bus drivers started learning new routes.

Among those who got a head start on Day One was Hattie Stephenson, a bespectacled grandmother of five, who has been piloting 45 feet of yellow bus for more than 29 years. Because of her experience, the district has assigned Stephenson to teach rookies how to handle hordes of children who will soon make “baiting the bus driver” a regular sport.

Also preparing for the first day of school was Jack Jennings, a Navy veteran who is in charge of scrubbing and sanitizing Jordan Intermediate School. For the past few weeks, Jennings, the school’s head custodian, has been sprucing things up to welcome Jordan’s 525 students.

With 35 rooms to buff and polish, 800 gym locker combinations to reset and endless globs of pink bubble gum to scrape off, Jennings is a busy man.

But Stephenson and Jennings both admit they can’t wait to see the kids.

Like a drill sergeant expecting the best, Stephenson barks out orders to rookies in a Kentucky drawl. She expects results and gets the district’s newest drivers in shape.

“Make a left turn on the signal,” booms Stephenson to rookie Manuel Perez as he learns how to make a stop. “Now, slow down, you don’t want to snap those kids’ heads back. Now watch that curve! What happened? You forgot how to drive?”

Besides driving on some of the most congested streets in the county, Garden Grove school bus drivers have to keep an eye on the kids, who are capable of anything, including creative bubble gum art and practical jokes. Others fall victim to motion sickness.

Stephenson has had her fair share of anything, including some memorable moments such as the time a hapless fifth-grader, sitting behind the driver’s seat, vomited on her back. Stephenson gritted her teeth and kept driving.

There was also the time when a high school baseball team disguised its mascot, a German Shepard, as a passenger. The players kept Stephenson busy with idle chatter outside the driver’s window. Once she started driving to the game, she noticed the stowaway happily sitting behind her. He was attired in a red bandanna, a cap and a team T-shirt.

“He was sitting there along with the rest of the kids enjoying the ride,” Stephenson said.

During the summer months, Stephenson not only teaches driver safety to trainees, she also sprinkles in other valuable lessons free of charge:

* How to quiet rowdy kids: “Pull the bus to the side of the road. Students think they are coming to a stop and they instinctively hold their speech.”

* Cleaning Kool-Aid and other liquids: “Keep a handy bag of sawdust nearby--scoops up the garbage in no time.”

* On getting respect from the children: “Don’t ever let them call you by your first name, honey; then they’ll think you’re one of them.”

The Garden Grove Unified School District trains its own drivers for its 87-bus fleet, which delivers children to school in the morning and returns them home in the afternoon. On a regular school day, the buses head out of the district’s fleet headquarters on Lampson by 6:20 a.m. and are off on more than 70 routes throughout Garden Grove and in parts of Santa Ana, Westminster and Fountain Valley.

Before new drivers are allowed on the road, they must be screened by the California Highway Patrol and complete 20 hours of classes in traffic safety and first aid, according to Ron Suttle, district transportation manager. Before they actually receive certificates from the CHP to drive, they also must have a minimum of 20 hours behind the wheel and demonstrate their competence.

Before taking on children, the rookies drive the district’s older buses, which are more difficult to maneuver but provide better training. They learn to “pre-trip” a bus by making sure all the equipment functions and how to escort children across the street properly.

Recently, Stephenson took Perez for a spin on Garden Grove’s busiest stretch of asphalt, the dreaded Beach Boulevard, where one wrong shift can halt traffic and start car horns blaring. Stephenson takes no chances with Perez’s training. She sits right behind the rookie and guides him along. The top priority, Stephenson says, is safety.

When Perez has trouble with a bus stop located in a cul-de-sac, Stephenson takes the wheel and shows him how it’s done. With three quick pops on the gas pedal, a drop to reverse gear and brake, Stephenson in seconds has the vehicle in position to hum toward its next stop.

Despite the bus sickness and practical jokes, Stephenson admits she can’t wait for school to begin.

“I just love the first day of school,” Stephenson said. “I get this excited feeling, and I get all hyped up. I look forward to seeing my kids, all those new clothes and those cute little kindergartners. It’s a great time.”

Jennings also looks forward to the students’ return, even if they hand him his worst job, disposing of chewing gum.

Gum is a custodian’s No. 1 enemy. Kids stick it on desks, chairs, grass, carpeting, window sills, everywhere. That’s why Jennings arms himself with a can of liquid cleaner and a garden hoe. The cleaner hardens it, and he uses the hoe to scrape it away.

“The kids get pretty inventive on where to put it,” Jennings said.

At 57, the Navy veteran is in his fifth year of cleaning schools. A former baby food and potato chip salesman, Jennings left the sales industry to be closer to children.

“There’s so much good in the kids,” Jennings said. “They make me feel young.”

During the early part of summer, Jordan Intermediate is eerily quiet. Desks and chairs are piled in corners. Classrooms are locked. And the loudest sound to be heard are the birds nesting behind the school bells. Spiders are content enough to spin a home between the legs of a school chair. And the emerald lawns are allowed to grow a little higher than usual.

But by the end of August, life leaps back on campus with a loud and pungent vengeance. Noisy lawn mowers whir across the grass, water is splashed across window panes and the smell of fresh paint permeates the air.

Every day, Jennings finds himself pulling dry grass and twigs from behind the school bells. That’s where sparrows like to build their nests. It’s a race against time for Jennings, who admits he won’t touch the nests once eggs are laid.

“I can’t do that to those poor cute birds,” he said.

Jennings also has to make sure the classrooms are squeaky clean, literally from top to bottom. That means ceilings are washed. Tiled floors are coated with wax and buffed to a nice glow. And the blackboards are washed down to get rid of last year’s chalk dust.

“Right now, cleaning up school can be a chore,” Jennings said. “But once the kids come back, it’s going to be fun.”

Back to School

Labor Day weekend traditionally marks the end of summer and signals the start of classes for most of Orange County’s 27 public school districts. District ELEMENTARY SCHOOL DISTRICTS Anaheim City School District: Sept. 10 Buena Park School District: Sept. 3 Centralia School District: Sept. 9 Cypress School District: Sept. 11 Fountain Valley School District: Sept. 10 Fullerton School District: Sept. 3 Huntington Beach City School District: Sept. 11 La Habra City School District: Sept. 3 Magnolia School District: Sept. 9 Ocean View School District: Sept. 11 Savanna School District: Sept. 11 Westminster School District: Sept. 10

HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICTS Anaheim Union High School District: Sept. 5 Fullerton Joint Union School District: Sept. 3 Huntington Beach Union School District: Sept. 5

UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICTS Capistrano Unified School District: Sept. 5 Garden Grove Unified School District: Sept. 5 Irvine Unified School District: Sept. 5 Laguna Beach Unified School District: Sept. 5 Los Alamitos Unified School District: Sept. 5 Newport-Mesa Unified School District: Sept. 5 Orange Unified School District: Sept. 4 Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District: Sept. 10 Saddleback Valley Unified School District: Sept. 5 Santa Ana Unified School District: Sept. 5 Tustin Unified School District: Sept. 11

OTHER SCHOOL DISTRICTS Lowell Joint School District *: Sept. 3 * Includes portions of Orange County and Los Angeles County

Source: Individual districts