School Bus Driver Is Driven to Distraction, Loses Job

When you think of the noble public servant working for modest wages under lousy conditions, whom do you think of? Policemen? Firemen? Trash men?

Believe me, those are plum assignments compared to the lot of the school bus driver.

You know what fun you have driving your two little darlings over to soccer practice. Picture yourself wheeling around town with 40 little darlings who know you can’t withhold their allowance.

It is a test of human endurance that few live far enough into their dotage to tell about.

That brings us to the case of Joyce Hana, a 31-year-old former big rig trucker who was hired in August to drive a bus for the Fullerton School District.

Hana had been having a problem with one of the 6th graders on her bus since early in the school year. She said he bullied other students and had the knack of, to put it delicately, passing gas in the presence of his pals. On Oct. 29, she gave the boy a “ticket” for behavioral problems, as provided under school district and state policy governing bus safety.

That same day, the boy complained to Hana that other kids told him she had coined a phrase by combining his first name and the word fart to describe a bad odor in the bus. Hana said she apologized to him in front of the other kids, but that the boy wasn’t placated. According to Hana, he then told her, “My father’s very powerful. All I have to do is tell him, and you’ll lose your job.”

Two days later, on Halloween, the boy wasn’t riding the bus, and Hana saw him at a bus stop near his home. She said she got out of the bus to talk to him in an attempt, she says, to “make peace.”

From a distance, the boy’s father saw the two talking and approached Hana. They exchanged a few caustic remarks, Hana said, which included the father’s comment that she was “going to lose (her) job.” Hana said her parting shot to the boy’s father was, “Now I understand where your son gets his attitude problem.”

The next day, Hana was fired.

Because she was a probationary employee (as are all drivers for the first six months of employment), the district didn’t have to give her a reason. Nor does she have the due process channels that a regular employee would.

Hana is convinced that the boy’s father got her fired.

I don’t know whether he did or not. I couldn’t reach him, and school district officials, citing confidentiality of personnel matters, wouldn’t comment.

One person privy to details of the case is Jodi Gomez, president of the school district’s employee union, but she is officially neutral because she isn’t representing Hana.

Gomez, despite writing a memo last week asking the district to reconsider Hana’s dismissal until at least her probation period ends, also believes that Hana made some mistakes.

A former bus driver herself, Gomez says Hana shouldn’t have gotten out of the bus, even if it was an attempt, as she said, to make peace with the boy. And once the boy’s father showed up, Hana shouldn’t have engaged him in conversation, Gomez said.

“You’re not yourself, you’re the driver of that bus,” Gomez said. “Your responsibility is to take the students to and from school, regardless of whether they like you or you like them. It’s your job to transport them, not to be the community liaison between parents and kids.”

But in her memo to the district, Gomez said the incident is reflective of “the lack of communication and instruction in this department,” referring to clear policies on the interactions between drivers and students.

In other words, what to do when the Irresistible Force meets the Immovable Object.

So, you tell me--in a society where people are scuffling to find work, is what Joyce Hana did worth getting fired over?

Are you telling me this matter couldn’t have been sorted out in the principal’s office?

I talked to another parent whose daughter also rode on Hana’s bus. The parent, who preferred anonymity because she doesn’t have a direct stake in the argument, said her daughter wanted to complain to the principal when she learned that Hana had been fired.

“She was very concerned about whether Joyce would get her job back,” the mother said. “She also said that several of the boys involved (the central figure and a couple of his friends) have bragged on the bus that they were able to get her fired. If that’s not the case, maybe the school district should set the other kids straight on things.”

Besides, this mother said, “If the driver is not allowed to write tickets because of bad behavior and if she thinks her job will be threatened by writing tickets, she’s not going to have control. . . . A bus driver has to have some kind of control and authority, and the district needs to stand behind them, to a certain degree.”

If school district officials caved in to a parent just because it’s easy to fire a probationary driver, they should consult their consciences about life in an unemployment line.

Gomez said she can see both sides of the argument. “Joyce was in the wrong place at the wrong time, said the wrong thing, and it got her fired,” Gomez said. “Some people lose their life by being in the wrong place; at least she just lost her job.”

Come on, Fullerton. Christmas is just around the corner. Give her another chance.