Oxford School District honors bus drivers, monitors for student safety
Oxford schools thanked bus drivers and monitors as students depended on 50-minute rides and a 40-person transportation team. Oasis Church provided lunch.
In Lafayette County, the bus ride is not a quick transfer between home and school. Oxford School District said its transportation department serves every student within district boundaries, with an average ride time of about 50 minutes each way, a reminder that the people behind the wheel and in the aisle shape the school day long before the first bell rings and long after dismissal.
The district recognized its bus drivers and monitors for their dedication to student safety, and Oasis Church provided lunch to thank the staff. The transportation department is made up of about 40 people, including drivers, mechanics and supervisors, and it covers regular routes, special-needs buses, field trips and athletic buses. That means the same small workforce helps carry students to class, to games and to other school activities across Oxford.
The work comes with constant pressure. Drivers and monitors are responsible not only for moving children from one stop to the next, but for keeping buses orderly, watching behavior, dealing with traffic and handling the unpredictable moments that come with transporting dozens of students at once. The district’s safety materials say yellow school bus transportation is the safest, most economical and friendly way to transport Oxford’s school children, and the system depends on daily bus inspections and random drug and alcohol testing for drivers each month. Oxford School District also makes an anonymous School Bus Safety Incident Report form available to parents and community members for concerns such as unsafe passing, speeding, failure to yield and distracted driving.
The recognition also fit a pattern. A May 24, 2019 district post showed the transportation department honoring drivers with end-of-year awards and lunch for accident-free miles and perfect attendance. That post named Jerry Pegues for perfect attendance during the 2018-2019 school year and listed a long group of drivers recognized for accident-free service, including Clifton Moore, Don Thornburg, Leroy Wilson, Shirley Blackmon, Anglea Smith, Lee Vaughn, James Cregar III, Porchia McGlown, Bradley Meyers, Vincent Rockett, Fred Spearman Jr., Upul Genendra Hewamanna, James Wes Pegues, Roy Alexander, Harold Cooper, Hugh Ivy, Alice Jones, Jamie Perkins, Eddie Key, Dale Quarles, Robert Howard, Kenorus Wilson, Randy Irby, Robie Clark and Lisa Powell.
For Oxford families, the message was plain: student safety does not happen by accident. It rests on a transportation team that carries a heavy daily load and on a community willing to notice the work before a problem makes it impossible to ignore.
Know something we missed? Have a correction or additional information?
Submit a Tip
