By Mike Donahue

Moapa Valley Progress

Five Clark County school bus drivers responsible for Moapa Valley routes are hoping to be rehired this August after being laid off earlier this year as part of a district-wide effort to cut costs.

Although district officials have told the five there is a high “likelihood” they’ll be rehired, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal the district has so far refused to be more positive. In point of fact, there may actually be more layoffs.

One dismissed driver estimated that if the drivers are not rehired, a 30-minute ride to school for some school kids may turn into an hour and some students may be forced to occasionally walk to school along roads sans street lights, sidewalks and in some cases pavement.

In addition to being concerned about the safety of the kids, laid-off drivers are on pins and needles wondering if they’ll have a job this fall.

Chris Garvey, the Clark County School Board Trustee representing Moapa Valley, is quoted as saying, “It’s not right to have people living in limbo (wondering about their jobs). It’s tough not knowing where you stand.”

Problems between district officials and Moapa Valley bus drivers are nothing new; they go back to the earliest days of school bus pick-ups and deliveries.

LaRue “Barney” Barnum, a fixture in Moapa Valley off and on for more than 90 years said when he was a high school senior and one of this area’s early bus drivers, he faced a major problem concerning students, the bus and the local superintendent.

Barney, 97, recalled that in the early 1930s the only school in the lower valley was in Overton. It handled all grades from elementary through high school.

Although there had been another school in St. Thomas, it was abandoned after the federal government bought the beautiful brick school building to make way for Lake Mead. Left over kids who had not yet moved from St. Thomas to escape the coming water, were forced to travel to Overton to continue their education.

Barney said that in those days there were three school buses that delivered students to Overton– one that originated in St. Thomas that carried students from that small soon-to-be-flooded community and others from points south, and two with routes that started in Logandale.

Bus drivers were usually those students who lived farthest from the school. Barney’s home was the last place on the northwest end of Logandale, so he was the designated driver for that area.

The school bus of the day was an old truck that “had been stripped of everything but the windshield,” Barney said. “Then they built a big ol’ wooden box on the back of the truck put in seats and that’s where students rode.”

Students who took the “bus” to school always arrived covered with dust; during the warmer months because there was nothing to prevent the dust from getting into the bus and during the colder months because they would enclose the big box, thus effectively containing all the dust that was picked up during the warmer months.

Barney said there were no real roads so he would just drive through the fields and stop at each house along his route.

“One day the superintendent met me after I dropped the kids off to school,” Barney recalled. “He was upset. ‘You’re late,’ he told me. ‘You’re almost always late.’

“Well, I explained that it took some kids a long time to get on the bus,” Barney said. “There was one family that had five or six kids and they really took their time loading up. One would dawdle then slowly climb aboard. Then another would come out of the house and slowly make his or her way to the bus and get on before the next one came out of the house and so on. It was terrible.”

Well, the superintendent blamed Barney for making everyone late to class and gave him an ultimatum.

“Two minutes,” Barney said. “He told me I could only wait at any one house two minutes and then I supposed to leave. So that’s what I did.”

The next time Barney stopped at the house with all the kids, one girl got on the bus, then one more boy. “Two minutes passed on my watch and I was on my way,” he said.

By the time Barney got to the next stop, the mother at the house he’d just left had already called up her neighbor told her to tell Barney to “get back down the road and pick up those kids you left.”

“No ma’am, I won’t,” Barney said. “The superintendent told me to wait two minutes so that’s what I did. I’m not going back.”

Barney said by the time he got to school that day, word had already reached the superintendent by phone and he met the bus “with the biggest smile you ever saw.”

“He told me I did just right and I should just keep it up,” Barney said. “Well, I really didn’t have to because after that everyone met the bus on time.”

Fortunately, as a school bus driver, Barney’s problem was pretty easy to solve and the end result was a benefit for the students and the school, not to mention making the superintendent happy.

Unfortunately, the current problem is not so clear-cut and simple. We can only hope its resolution, however, no matter how it turns out for the district and the local drivers, is to the benefit of Moapa Valley students.

“Rural Rants” is a column about rural living and the people who live here. It appears the first and third Wednesday of the month. Your comments and input are important and will be appreciated. Contact me via email at mouse@mvdsl.com