School bus drivers are a rare breed

By Nancy Haus

School bus drivers. Who are they anyway? And do they really “bleed yellow?” Who are the people who get up at the break of dawn each morning to transport nearly 25 million of our kids twice a day in more than 400,000 school buses over 4.3 billion miles in the United States annually?

Who would respond to a classified ad with this job description?

Well, it just so happens there are lots of special people out there who love this job working as a skilled professional.  In the Baldwinsville School District, baby boomers and retirees comprise a huge percentage of the more than 100 drivers on staff.

Today, over 512,000 commercially licensed drivers nationally transport children to and from school each day. Trainees spend 20 hours in a classroom and 20 hours behind the wheel with a trained instructor in an intense program designed to subject them to as many of the possible experiences that may occur in this type of career.

They submit to ongoing alcohol testing, criminal background checks, and extensive first-aid training programs to prepare them for what lies ahead.

Why?

Particularly for baby-boomers and retirees, the part-time nature of driving a bus appeals to their lifestyle needs, although moms are attracted to being able to get home when their kids do, and spending summers together.

Baby boomers are often winding down their careers and are no longer interested in “climbing the ladder of success.” Retirees have already ended their careers but not their lives and still want to keep active.

Drivers who so greatly enjoy handling the big yellow machines while interacting with the kids, and become so dedicated, are curiously thought to “bleed yellow.” These so-called “second-milers” can maintain discipline, never have an accident, know their yellow bus inside out, and bring a very special desire to go that extra mile for children. Baby boomers and retirees actually fit into this category very nicely.

The ‘front line’— Bus drivers are the front line of your kids’ school day, and often, the drivers’ caring ways become evident to students who begin to talk to them, even confide in them.

After all, baby boomers and retirees have lots of experience to draw from, and generally enjoy the kids they transport. The kids feel this and often need someone to talk to anyway.

Ongoing training and testing keeps them up-to-date on the latest transportation regulations with the result that the National Safety Council calls the school bus the” safest form of ground transportation in the United States.” It’s quite an honor that this group earns by their strict adherence to safety regulations, along with caring for their precious cargo.

Bus drivers have worked hard to lower the statistics for child injuries and mortalities on a school bus to 0.005, contributing to the school buses’ designation as the “safest form of ground transportation.”

Yet, 46 percent of students in grades K-12 still ride to school in private, unsupervised vehicles.

Working in a school district transportation department opens your eyes to who these people really are.

It takes a special person to concentrate on driving safely and managing kids amidst the noise, shenanigans, and sometimes profane language and behavior that occur on the bus.

Imagine yourself taking on this job for just one day and it’s likely the respect you have for your child’s bus driver would increase immensely.

Think about your child’s requests to get their bus driver a Christmas present, or to draw them a picture. They become a special person in the lives of your children, and your children become special people in the lives of the bus drivers, who commonly drop books, clothes, and cell phones off to their students’ homes—either by way of bus or on their own time.

They never leave a child at a home when no one is there or the sitter is different than the one listed, unless they receive a note from the parents. Their main concern is always the kids.

True heroes— Bill Donaghey retired from the post office as an internal auditor after nearly 38 years.Within two months, he was bored with retirement and began searching for a part-time job.

In September, 2005, he began working as a bus driver in the Baldwinsville School District. Why drive a school bus?

“Well, I like kids, and I really enjoy the job. The income isn’t bad either,” says Donaghey. He had briefly driven school bus in the Solvay School District and was close to earning a small state pension. With another reason for signing on, he’s happy he did.

“The kids are great. We have a good understanding. They know my boundaries, and I know theirs, so we get along well. We work things out if there’s a problem,” he said. Donaghey expects that this will probably be his last year of driving.

Kevin Cunningham also came to Baldwinsville as a post office retiree. It took him a few months to seek a job, but he agrees with Donaghey that the “kids are great, and the free time, hours, and pay aren’t bad either.”

Jim Bannon retired from the world of marketing and soon afterwards decided he needed something to do. He had driven a school bus during college and was drawn to the perks of driving bus at this stage of his life.

For Bannon, the convenient hours, the time off, the proximity to home, and the lack of business-world stress are a real plus. “I enjoy the kids, who are usually well-behaved. But everybody, even in the marketing world, has a bad day now and then,” he said.

Now, Bannon is a school bus attendant due to eye problems and the strict requirements drivers have to comply with. Like the others, he feels bus drivers are “good people” who are primarily concerned about their kids, and who are dedicated to supporting each other on the road and off. There’s a special camaraderie that exists between the drivers and attendants.

Jack Harrington came to Baldwinsville from the Syracuse Sheriff’s Department. As an attendant, he rides on a bus for kids with special needs. These range from just helping some who have difficulty getting on and off the bus to wheelchair-bound kids. No matter how hard he tries to remain emotionally detached, he says, “I fall in love with each and every one of them.”

In Liverpool, Bob Peters is the director of transportation and he says, “Liverpool is comparable to Baldwinsville in terms of staff. Our demographics are just a little different.”  He says, “I think the split between men and women drivers is pretty even.”

Nancy Westcott, director of transportation at Baldwinsville, sums it up by saying, “I have found retirees to be very dedicated workers, and students seem to interact with them as they would with a family member.”

As more adults return to workforce, officials say they see more cases of age discrimination

By Aaron Gifford

With this major recession, age discrimination claims are rising across the country, throughout the state, and in Central New York.

Last year, there were 69 age discrimination complaints registered with the state Division of Human Rights from people in Onondaga, Madison, Oswego and Cayuga counties. That’s up from 51 the previous year and 31 in 2007, when the first signs of economic slowdown were reported.

For Onondaga County alone, the number of age discrimination claims filed with that state agency increased from 36 in 2008 to 59 last year.

For the first two months of 2010, there were a total of eight age discrimination complaints from Central New Yorkers, including six from Onondaga County.

Statewide, the number of claims with the Division for Human Rights increased from 1,296 in 2007 to 1,423 last year.

“I wouldn’t be surprised at all to hear that there’s an increase,” said Stefan Berg, a Syracuse attorney who specializes in employment discrimination matters. “You see a lot of people 50 or 55 let go and the company hires someone half their age. People are being let go in what normally looks like age discrimination. But employers are permitted to let people go for financial reasons.”

The state Division of Human Rights handles complaints through a multi-faceted process that can involve negotiations between the two sides or a final hearing and a decision through an administrative law judge. Not every age discrimination claim in the state is brought to that agency; some matters are handled entirely in the civil court system.

A federal agency, the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, deals with claims in a similar fashion. And those who allege age discrimination can still pursue their case in court if they are unsuccessful with either agency. Cases cannot be brought to a federal court unless the litigant first submitted a claim to the EOEC or a similar state agency, but there is no such restriction for filing an age discrimination suit in state court.

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 protects individuals  40 and over from being laid-off, fired, demoted, or not promoted or hired solely on the basis of their age. That federal law does not apply to those younger than 40.

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, age discrimination allegations reached a record-high last year as 22,778 claims were filed with state or federal agencies. That’s up from 18,103 two years prior (2007) and 14,141 a decade prior (1999).  Those totals don’t include cases filed in state courts with no involvement with a state Division for Human Rights agency.

This trend could continue past the recession. The existing work force is aging as employees are retiring later due to decreasing investment funds during the past several years. To cut costs, companies often target older workers who have larger salaries and compensation packages due to raises and benefits like sick time and vacation pay accrued during a career.

Nationally, 62.3 percent of age discrimination cases filed last year was closed on grounds of no reasonable cause. About 9.4 percent of the 22,778 complaints filed that year with state or federal agencies were settled, according to the EEOC.

Berg cautioned that some of those figures may be misleading. He estimates that 95 percent of age discrimination claims are settled “before an official decision (judge) maker gets involved.”

The EEOC also reported that $72.1 million in awards was paid out to age discrimination complaints last year who filed cases with state or federal agencies like the EEOC or New York State Division for Human Rights. That figure doesn’t include litigation awards determined by courts.

Berg said he was involved in a recent case where 4,000 employees at a large upstate New York employer proved instances of age discrimination, though he said terms of the litigation restrict him from naming the company or other details about the case. He believes age discrimination is widely under-reported, though many employers and personnel managers may not be aware that they’re breaking a federal law.

Code words for age discrimination, he said, include employees who are deemed “not up to date, not current, or not computer literate.” Berg adds, “A lot of my clients hear things like that often.”

Age discrimination is a common problem in the application process. In these tough financial times, Berg said, “a lot of people who apply for jobs have great resumes and they’re being rejected without knowing why.”

But it’s very difficult to prove that age was the sole reason that you were not selected in a competitive pool of applicants, Berg said.

“There are so many applications for every position now,” he said. “In order to make your case, you would need the resumes of everyone else who applied. That could be 75 resumes. The litigation would be quite costly.”

A 2007 decision involving a Cornell University employment dispute provides a good example of the difficulty in proving age discrimination. In that case, a 63-year employee who had a PhD from Cornell applied to serve as curator of the South Asia Collection after having served as a serial assistant in that department for over 20 years. The position became available in 2002 when a senior curator ended a long career there after a dispute with other department heads.

The claimant, Omar Afzal, was not recommended for an interview but was later granted one after he complained about it. Ultimately, the person hired was 28 years younger than him. That candidate, Adna Malik, who came from the University of Chicago, hadn’t yet completed his master’s degree at the time of hire. And one of the hiring committee members admitted that when the job was posted he told others that he “was looking for half the (retired) incumbent’s age with twice the incumbent’s energy,” according to case documents.

Hiring committee members testified that Afzal was hired because of the excellent work he did as the curator of the University of Chicago’s Asian Studies department. They testified that he is “a team player, easy to work with and willing to take on new assignments.” They said Afzal was “ornery, prickly and combative.” After Malik was hired, Afzal was given a pay increase and an “equity payment.” Cornell officials also offered to create a new position for him within the department, but he declined the offer and later resigned, according to case documents.

The case was dismissed two years after Afzal’s resignation. Decision papers noted that even though Afzal’s resume included his date of birth, 11 of the 13 applicants for the job did not note their ages. Committee members also testified that age was not discussed when they weeded out applicants.

“The complainant did not establish that his age or Malik’s age was a factor in the decision to recommend Malik,” wrote Administrative Law Judge Christine Marbach Kellett.

Berg said he is aware of discrimination instances in competitive public sector employment decisions where exam scores determine a short list of candidates, especially if there are internal candidates. In a group of three strong applicants with similar test scores and credentials, managers may chose the person they are already the most familiar with rather than taking the time to learn about an outside candidate who had several years of experience somewhere else.

“And as far as the EEOC is concerned, it looks like you went through the Civil Service process fairly,” Berg said. “It doesn’t meet the spirit of the (employment discrimination) law, but yet, the requirements of the system are being met.”

Berg said it is tough to avoid including clues to your age on a resume or application. It may be OK to leave out the year you graduated from college, but at the same time an application may ask for specific dates at a previous job and the applicant would otherwise be encouraged to note having several years of experience in their field.

“But when you walk in you can’t hide that you’re not 25 years old,” he said. “I think employers should realize that there are a lot of plusses to hiring older workers. They are more reliable and they’re experience can’t be duplicated. And they probably have fewer excuses for not showing up.”

Chuck Hudson, 52, of Oneida, thinks age discrimination is probably rampant among potential employers, though he’s never filed a claim. Hudson lost his job of over 30 years when the Smith-Lee paper products plant in Oneida closed in March 2009. He’s applied for jobs in factories and printing presses throughout Central New York and the Mohawk Valley, with no luck.

“I think it’s much worse for those over 50,” Hudson said. “If you’re 50 and over, people don’t want to hire you because they might think you’re going to retire soon, or maybe you’re not as healthy as younger workers. It just isn’t fair, because your bills and your mortgage don’t go away when you hit 50.”

It’s never too late to learn new skills, find new careers

Many are faced with having to change careers. I recently asked three “recareerists” what advice they would have for others.

Steven Kass

Steven’s first career (five years working as a management trainee for a men’s clothing manufacturer) was spent doing nothing that had to do with the rest of his life.

Knowing he always liked technology and realizing he was miscast in the clothing business, he studied on his own by buying books about programming and learning IBM languages. Self-study enabled him to get hired as a programmer for a small consulting firm. The owner, recognizing Kass’ outgoing personality and natural people skills, moved him from programming into sales.

After two years he moved to a large firm, learning about “big iron,” mid-range and mainframe computers. He worked his way up in sales but became more interested in software and services. Another couple of moves, further refined his goal to focusing on consulting services in the software area.
“There’s a fine line between selling and delivering, but I realized I really liked performing the service,” said Kass.

“You become knowledgeable through reading and getting involved in industry training about relevant topics. After doing something once, you become expert in that particular area and a valuable commodity to organizations looking to do the same tasks.”

Kass’ advice: “Figure out what you love and what you want to do, because that will make the learning easier. Take an extensive look at what you’ve done and see how you can recombine it. I looked at the 10-15 years spent in sales and marketing managing large teams and realized I had years of project management, and translated that experience in such a way that I now manage delivery teams. It takes time to analyze your skills and become comfortable thinking this way.”

He continued, “Examine your resume closely and you can change the way it looks. You may have worked at one place for years, but did many different things, so take what you’ve done, slice it differently and it becomes a functional resume.”

“You can do things horizontally and or vertically,” said Kass. “You can know everything about a certain business — vertical — or you can know a particular function in depth — horizontal. When I reinvented myself I became one of each; where the horizontal and vertical intersect is where the sweet spot is and that’s where I am.”

Kass consults with governmental agencies and financial institutions. His expertise is in enterprise contact management working with all types of information within an organization.

James Gray

Through the wonders of Facebook, I reconnected with James Gray, whose fascinating career path went from CEO to chef. Initially a newspaper reporter, then TV anchor, then a jog to advertising and public relations that led to a move into digital video production at the dawn of that era. Next was trade association management: Central New Yorkers may remember Gray from his nearly 10 years in Syracuse as the president and chief operating officer of the Manufacturers Association of Central New York (MACNY) where he met and married his wife, broadcast executive Linda Gray.

After Syracuse, Gray worked in New York City for a public/private economic development association. When his wife moved to Indianapolis to manage a Fox TV station, he went with her, taking a position as the executive director of the local Society of Professional Journalists.

“That was when I first began pursuing my interest in the culinary arts, by taking night courses at a community college,” Gray said.

“Those courses gave me the confidence that I could actually be a chef, so when we moved to Montana, I had a transportable skill. I struck out on my own as a personal chef, then three incarnations working in restaurants. First, as chef and consultant, I developed a menu of sweet and savory crepes for a new beverage place, followed by a position in a small chain of espresso shops as kitchen manager creating a menu of gourmet sandwiches and soups. Then [I became] executive chef at a new golf course restaurant, starting the place from scratch.”

Gray also spent two semesters as adjunct instructor in the University of Montana’s culinary program and in 2005 was selected as Montana Chef of the Year by the American Culinary Federation’s Montana Chefs Association. The Grays formed a production company and now produce weekly segments of “Kitchen Guy—The Tastiest Two Minutes in Television” that can be found on the Web at www.kitchenguy.biz.
Gray’s advice: “I am committed to lifelong learning and found the right program for me; that’s really the secret. It is never too late to learn new skills. At 50 I was the oldest person in my culinary arts class, including the teacher, but they had something to teach me and I wanted to learn it.”

Lida Dawson Price

Lida’s story may sound familiar. After her first job as a quantitative analytical chemist in a brain chemistry research project at a Harvard laboratory, she moved to Syracuse and became a homemaker raising four children. Price volunteered in her children’s school community and was president of the parent’s council; she also served as an elder in her church.

Dawson Price did a lot of writing in her volunteer work and started taking graduate courses at the Newhouse School in newspaper and magazine writing.

“When I needed to go back to work,” she explains, “science had passed me by. With all the writing I was doing, combined with my science background, I felt I should go into technical writing. It was difficult to get a job as employers were either looking for beginners or people with experience. My age seemed to disqualify me as a beginner even though I lacked experience.”

“I was becoming discouraged when a good friend told me ‘though it may seem all the doors are closed, a job will appear that seems to come out of the blue but that will not happen unless you keep looking.’”

That proved to be true. Though Dawson Price was looking for technical writing, she ended up in human services. The superintendent of schools where she had volunteered called, said they missed her writing, and offered a part-time position as editor of the district newspaper. Then a friend at church asked her to apply for another part-time job at the denomination’s regional synod. She wrote long feature articles and did some secretarial work but as the synod restructured, was given more responsibility and ended up on the executive staff in a full-time position. “I became staff to a working relationship between the synod and the Protestant church in Madagascar, an island nation off the east coast of Africa. Going there also gave me the chance to speak French that I hadn’t used for years.”

Dawson Prices advice: “Develop other skills that you enjoy employing, such as I did with writing, and keep yourself open to new directions that may suddenly present themselves. Women with families who want to go back to work, should look carefully at their volunteer experiences to see what opportunities are there.”