For 19 years, Bill Pratt rose at 4:30 every morning and by 6:30 a.m., was picking up special education students from their homes and delivering them to Blount County Schools in a school bus. For 19 years, Bill Pratt completed his morning run by 8:30 a.m., and resumed again between 1:30 and 2 p.m., dropping off the last student at home around 4:30 in the evening. Pratt recently took the final child home and is hanging up his driving cap, retiring at age 84. “I just don’t have the energy anymore,” Pratt said. This is his second retirement, a U.S. Army veteran of the Korean War, Pratt retired in August 1979 from his job at the uniform company UniFirst Corp. in Knoxville. After two months, he got stir crazy. “My wife said, ‘You’ve got to get out of here,’” Pratt said. He sought out and received training through Rocky Top School Buses and began driving the special education bus on routes that took him all over the county. “They’re kids that need to be loved,” Pratt said. “You can have a lot of fun just kidding with them.”
According to officials, a 71-year-old school bus driver suffered a medical emergency and slammed into a porch outside a local residence. “Luckily, I wasn’t sitting in the living room chair because that’s where it hit,” the homeowner said. “I opened the front door and the bus was sitting there. My porch was gone.” None of the 48 kindergarten through fourth grade students on the bus were injured. The bus was on its way to Northwest Elementary School when the driver lost control and collided with gas meter before hitting the porch and shattering one of the home’s windows. The driver was taken to the hospital. Valley Lines, the bus company, reported that the driver, who has worked for the company for 12 years, has been released from driving due to his health.
The route down a muddy, unpaved road has grown so dangerous that the Henderson school principal alerted parents the school bus would no longer pick up kids along Regina Lane, shifting the bus stop to a nearby road, which is paved. The decision was made out of “safety for the students.” Parents are obviously miffed. “I don’t feel comfortable with doing that,” one parent said. “By the time (my son) gets down from that long path, he’s going to be full of mud. And I don’t think that that’s going to be safe and somebody should do something about it.” The Vance County DOT has been contacted and reported that the road would be scraped, however, paving of the road would be the responsibility of the owner of Regina Lane, as it’s a private road. DOT confirmed workers were in the area clearing the mud, but area residents claimed that it only made matters worse.
A little girl started running after a man in a white van reportedly followed her. The 9-year-old Prairie-Lincoln Elementary School student was able to make it safely to her bus stop, where other parents were waiting. That’s when she says the guy backed off and disappeared. After hearing the story, the principal immediately called the authorities and then sent a notice to parents to be on the lookout and talk to their kids. While the third grader is fine, her sister said she didn’t want to go to school the next morning. “I walked her to the bus stop. And thankfully a lot of the parents took it serious too and a lot of them walked their kids to the bus stop as well,” the student said. There isn’t much of a description of the suspect, just that he was in a white van. But the school district says its transportation department is also on alert and drivers are keeping an eye out for any suspicious people.
