A Maryland mother likes to bring a bit of wackiness to the school commute, dressing up in a variety of costumes to amuse the schoolkids on the bus. Candice Thompson has been donning a number of amusing outfits to accompany her two daughters to the bus stop for nearly two years.
It started out as just donning silly hats, blossoming into full costumes and even a Facebook page to show off her various looks.
“I just like dressing up and being funny,” Thompson said. “The kids love it and they go to school happy. All the bus drivers know to wave to me.”
Many of the students wave, too, and Thompson said her two youngest daughters also enjoy the costumes and even help her dress up in the morning. Though she’s assured them that she’ll stop when they don’t like it anymore.
She figures she has until they finish elementary school before the embarrassment sinks in.
She hopes other parents might hear about her morning ritual and start doing the same thing at their kids’ bus stops. She’s already got at least one person who hopes to carry on the tradition.
Proving the time-tested theory that provoking kids will a quick way to get thrown in jail, South Carolina deputies have arrested a 30-year-old mom who allegedly confronted students aboard a school bus about bullying of her child. Princess Killingsworth has been charged with interfering with the normal operations of a school bus and assault in the third degree. According to deputies, there was an ongoing dispute between Killingsworth’s son and other students, which reached a head one morning when officers claim that Killingsworth approached some of the kids at a bus stop and began yelling profanities at them. Once the bus came, officers say she boarded the bus along with the kids. The bus driver got between the students and the woman and convinced her to leave, but officers say as she was leaving, she grabbed one student, pinched his arm, then pushed him. Deputies then responded to the scene and took her into custody.
The Bozeman School Board will vote on whether to pay school bus contractor First Student about $100,000 more a year so that it can raise hourly pay, in an effort to end a severe shortage of drivers that has forced cancellation of some bus routes. The money would come from the Montana school district’s transportation fund, which has a $3.1 million budget supported by state and county dollars plus local property taxes. The fact that some routes had to be canceled last week because of the driver shortage means some savings would be available to pay part of the wage increase. Administrators recommend that the School Board authorize them to renegotiate with First Student to raise starting wages to something closer to the prevailing wage. The First Student company recently increased starting pay from $12.25 an hour to $14, but the prevailing wage for school bus drivers in this area is $18.10 an hour plus $5.30 for benefits, according to a memo from Steve Johnson, deputy superintendent for operations.
A school bus carrying seven children burst into flames on the Garden State Parkway, snarling traffic on the busy highway as the evening rush was getting underway. All seven kids, whose ages haven’t been released, were safely taken off the bus and transferred to another. It’s not clear what caused the fire on the bus. All lanes across the southbound side of the highway were initially closed as emergency personnel responded, but the closures are now limited to the right two lanes.
