To the editor:
This is in response to Clare Kierstead’s letter to the editor dated Jan. 31, 2007. While I can appreciate your concern, you should have investigated your hearsay information. Your signature indicates you are from Presque Isle. But surely, you could not be talking about our bus drivers in SAD 1. Because as anyone familiar with our bus fleet would know, all extra trips are taken strictly on a volunteer basis by SAD 1 bus drivers. No one in Administration forces any driver to take any trip.
I have been a bus driver for 26 years and have punched in at 6:30 a.m. all those years. There are over 30 drivers on our trip rotation list. We do not have to take a trip and some of us choose only to take trips in the county and some of us don’t do trips at all.
Our school bus transportation program is committed to providing safe and effective transportation for all school children. Nationwide highway transportation statistics clearly show that the safest form of highway transportation available is in a yellow school bus. Crashes that result in fatalities in school buses are rare events.
May I suggest next time you “overhear” a conversation that bothers you that you verify your facts and specify which entity you are referring to before you write a letter to the editor.
Andrea Bard-Smith
Mapleton
