ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, October 15, 1996 TAG: 9610150121
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
Botetourt County's school bus drivers are taking their fight for better pay and benefits to the Board of Supervisors today, but they are likely to find that well dry - tapped out by requests for extra money the School Board made earlier this year.
After Thursday's School Board meeting when the drivers' gripes were acknowledged but put off until the planning for next year's budget, the drivers set out to get on the agenda for today's supervisors meeting.
They weren't on the agenda as of Monday afternoon, but Supervisors Vice Chairman John Shiflett said he was telling the bus drivers to show up for the meeting at 9:15 a.m., and the board will find time to hear them. Board members Bonnie Mayo and Robert E. Layman Jr. also said the drivers should be heard.
If the drivers' complaints aren't addressed in the next few weeks, driver Barbara Helms said she and at least four other drivers were prepared to resign.
With a nationwide shortage of school bus drivers this year, finding replacements might not be easy. Botetourt is already depending on three bus mechanics and the transportation department secretary to fill in for sick drivers.
Shiflett said the drivers have some legitimate complaints, but the supervisors can't do anything to help unless the School Board asks them to - and the School Board already has gone back to the well twice this year for a total of more than $500,000.
Just last month, the board gave the school system $300,000 for extra teachers to alleviate some classroom crowding.
"I thought we set a bad precedent before," Shiflett said. "We can't be giving them money every time they come up there rattling the bag."
School Board Chairman Jim Ruhland said if the supervisors had given the School Board the money it said it needed for this year, these problems wouldn't be happening.
"These are problems that money would fix," he said.
The School Board had requested a $3.6 million funding increase for this year, but the other board left it $1.4 million short.
With that money, the School Board could have given 5 percent raises instead of 3 percent, Ruhland said. The board also could have bought the seven buses it wanted, including two extra-large ones. Instead, only five buses were bought. Those buses would have helped alleviate some of the drivers' problems, Ruhland said.
This year, Botetourt opened a new school, implemented a middle school system, and added 141 students. Yet the county has the same number of buses and drivers.
That means the drivers are spending more time on the road, much of it with no riders, for which they are not paid. The extra work wouldn't be so bad, the drivers say, if they were paid for it.
But when they got their first paychecks of the year two weeks ago and saw how they were being paid, they threatened a walkout.
Barbara Helms drove a 21/2-hour, 30-mile route last year. Helms now covers 70 miles in five hours. Yet she said her monthly pay went up only $16, and unlike other drivers, she has very little dead time.
Part of the problem, the drivers say, is the basis for calculating their pay.
Other Roanoke Valley school systems pay their drivers by the hour, but Botetourt pays its drivers on a combination of road time and mileage. Drivers are paid from when they pick up their first child, and not for the time they spend doing safety checks and fueling the buses.
Ruhland said the School Board is "very sensitive" to the drivers' needs, but this isn't the time to address them.
"It wouldn't be fair to change the salary structure for some employees and not for others," he said, especially when the budget process for next year begins in two months.
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