The People Behind the Wheel
Quincy’s bus drivers move more than students, they carry the trust of an entire community every day.
Most mornings in Quincy start the same way. Something you do almost every day without a great deal of thought. Coffee brewing. Kids half-awake at the kitchen table. A scramble to find shoes that were right there five minutes ago. Backpacks zipped, maybe a quick “I love you,” and then out the door into the cold or the wind or whatever the day decided to bring.
And somewhere in that rhythm, right on time, the bus shows up.
Even if your kids don’t ride the bus. Even if you don’t have kids at all.
Those yellow buses are part of all of our lives.
We see them at intersections, rolling through neighborhoods, stopping traffic so a child can cross safely. We pass them on our way to work. We trust them on icy mornings and busy afternoons without even thinking about it.
They move through our town like they’ve done it a thousand times before.
Because they have.
But what we don’t always stop and think about is who’s sitting in that driver’s seat.
Not a system. Not a department.
A person.
In Quincy, it’s probably someone you know.
There are 21 drivers and 4 substitutes keeping that system running. People with lives that don’t pause just because the bus route starts. Some are stay-at-home parents carving out a few hours in the morning and afternoon. Some run businesses. Some work other jobs and flex their schedules to make this work. These aren’t just employees. They’re woven into the fabric of this town.
I know that personally. I know at least eight of them and I’m married to one.
Our mornings start a little earlier than most. I’m wrapping up the morning show while she’s getting ready to go drive your kids to school. We compare schedules, trade a few quick words, and then she’s out the door.
I wake up our kids just in time for them to stumble out of bed and hug their mom before she leaves. It’s a small moment.
But it’s also the moment she steps into a job that carries a whole lot of responsibility for a whole lot of families.
When you see it up close, it changes how you think about that bus pulling up to that bus stop with kids waiting to head to school.
Because that job isn’t just driving.
Every weekday, they’re responsible for safely moving between 1,300 and 1,400 students across our community, covering nearly 2,000 miles a day. That’s a lot of road. That’s a lot of responsibility. That’s a lot of moments where something could go wrong, and it doesn’t, because someone is paying attention.
They learn the routes, but they also learn the kids.
Who needs a little extra patience in the morning. Who just moved here. Who had a rough day yesterday. Who’s excited about a game, a concert, a field trip. They form a relationship with the students in their care.
I watched my wife light up with pride as she watched kids from her bus on the stage at various events like Footloose and the Spring Choir Concert. Even as she pulls information for the morning show. She is so proud when she sees one of her bus students come across the news for an accomplishment.
Field trips don’t just happen. It might be educational, it might be a sports trip or an internal trip like the recent 5th & 6th Grade Career Field. The transportation department is part of it and there is a bus driver waiting to deliver those students safely there and back.
So far this year, they’ve already handled close to 400 trips and activities, and spring hasn’t even really hit its stride yet.
That’s early mornings, late nights, weekends, and long drives so kids can have experiences that go way beyond the classroom.
And they do it without a lot of fanfare.
There’s also a whole layer of work most of us never see. Monthly safety meetings. Real training on loading procedures, emergency response, even crisis scenarios. Ongoing certification and defensive driving. First Aid and CPR training.
Every bus carries an accident response packet, ready if something ever does go wrong.
And behind all of it, the mechanics. The ones in the shop making sure those buses are actually safe to put on the road. The ones who catch problems before they become problems. The ones who make a 98% DOT inspection score possible, which doesn’t happen unless people are doing their job the right way, every single day.
It’s easy to miss that part because when everything works, it’s invisible.
That’s kind of the point.
These mechanics are above and beyond too. Stepping in and driving routes periodically to make other trips possible or cover sick drivers because we don’t have enough subs. More than just their normal day with little to no notice sometimes.
If you slow down for a second, it’s actually something pretty remarkable.
Every morning, we hand our kids over to someone else and trust them to get them where they need to go safely. We don’t sign paperwork for it every day. We don’t stop and think about it.
We just trust.
And in a school district like ours, that trust isn’t abstract. It’s personal.
It’s someone you’ve talked to at the store. Someone you’ve sat next to at a game. Someone whose kids go to school with yours.
They’re driving through construction detours on Rd R. Adjusting routes. Working through behavior challenges. Figuring out new systems like Smart Tags that don’t always go smoothly at first.
It’s not a perfect system.
It’s people doing their best, every single day, in real conditions, with real responsibility.
And most of the time, they do it so well that we don’t even think about it.
The bus shows up. The kids get on. Traffic pauses. The day moves forward.
That’s the quiet kind of excellence that holds a community together.
So maybe this is just a moment to notice it.
To notice the driver behind the wheel at the intersection. To notice the bus you’re waiting behind on your way to work.
To notice the people in the shop keeping those buses safe long before the first pickup of the day. Because whether you have kids on that bus or not, you’re part of the system that trusts them.
And in a community like the 98848, that kind of trust isn’t small.
It’s built on people.
Real people.
Neighbors.
The ones carrying our kids, our schedules, and a piece of this community forward every single day.
That’s worth noticing.
And it’s worth saying out loud.
Thank you.