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Highlands Today

Bus Takes The Long Way Back To Sebring

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By MARC VALERO

Highlands Today

Published: October 9, 2008

SEBRING - Sebring High School suffered two losses Friday with the football team's road trip to Jensen Beach High School - the Blue Streaks lost a high-scoring game on the field to the Falcons, and the bus driver, driving the cheerleading squad, got lost on the way back to Sebring.

There's more than one way to travel between Sebring and Jensen Beach, but traveling through Yeehaw Junction and Lake Wales is not among the routes.

After the football game in Jensen Beach, the cheerleaders and chaperones boarded the bus between 10:15 p.m. and 10:30 p.m., the bus' security camera shows, district Transportation Director David Solomon said Wednesday.
Google Maps shows a 93-mile route with a travel time of 2 hours and 22 minutes. MSN Maps shows a different route with 2 hours and 7 minutes of driving time.

Around 1 a.m., or 2 1/2 hours after the bus was boarded in Jensen Beach, it was nowhere near Sebring.

The driver, with nine years experience with the district, apparently took a wrong turn and got on the Florida Turnpike and couldn't get off until Yeehaw Junction, Solomon said. At Yeehaw Junction it was decided to travel west on State Road 60 to Lake Wales to return to Sebring.

The bus finally arrived at Firemen's Field at 2:17 a.m. on Saturday.
School Board Chairman J. Ned Hancock believes it takes a driver with a certain demeanor and experience to be able to handle long sports road trips.

"I don't think we should be endangering the lives of our students based on some archaic formula on how we are going to allocate a driver to a bus," Hancock said at Tuesday's school board meeting. The district and school board have to do whatever is necessary to change the policy, even if it means renegotiating the union contract.

Bus drivers for field trips and extracurricular activities are chosen by seniority and availability.

"I've been assured that there is always a school cell phone on a bus," Hancock said. There's never been a school phone on the bus.

"Now most of those kids have got a cell phone and they are glad to let people use them especially if it's one in the morning (1 a.m.) and they are sitting at Yeehaw Junction and nobody knows how to get home."

Along with the investigation into Friday's trip, Solomon is also looking into an incident this year involving the Sebring cheerleader bus on a trip to Frostproof.

"There was a new driver on that route and I guess he got lost there. There was some confusion," Solomon said.

The sponsors/chaperones are supposed to bring the directions, he added.

Hancock said, "if I'm going to ask you to drive a group of employees or a group of your coworkers and you agree to it, I would assume you know how to get there and back," or you would get the directions.

With maps and routes available on the Internet and Global Positioning Systems (GPS), it should be easy to be assured that you are taking the correct route, Hancock said.

The long work day is not fair to the driver, he said. "In this case, this driver drove for almost 24 hours straight when you consider starting a route at 6 a.m. and not completing the day with the students until 2 a.m."

"I think it is as serious a safety issue as we got in this district," Hancock added.

Marc Valero can be reached at 386-5826 or mvalero@highlandstoday.com

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