Peggy A. Burns, Esq., the legal go-to in the school bus industry for the past two decades, announced her retirement effective at the end of 2015.
In September, Burns and business partner Roseann Schwaderer told subscribers of their publication “Legal Routes” that they would cease operations with the September 2015 issue. Her official retirement as the active leader of Education Compliance Group will be Dec. 31 of next year.
Peggy A. Burns, Esq. will retire from the industry at the end of 2015.This coming year’s TSD Conference in Frisco, Texas and STN EXPO in Reno, Nevada, will also be her last, Burns told STN. She added that she will honor a prior commitment made to present at the Texas Association for Pupil Transportation conference in 2016, but otherwise her speaking career will come to a close next year.
“My work with the school bus industry has been the most satisfying of my professional life,” she said. “While I certainly hope that there has been value to the wonderful folks I’ve worked with, I truly believe that I’ve gotten broader benefit from the last 20 years than I could possibly have given.
“Still, I treasure the thought that I have helped school transportation leaders make legally defensible decisions that have contributed to student safety.”
Burns first became a regular contributor to School Transportation News in 1995, after Editor and Publisher Bill Paul saw her present at the Transporting Students with Disabilities & Preschoolers National Conference, which Schwaderer had launched the prior year. At the time, Burns was staff counsel and director of policy and legal services for Adams 12 Five Star Schools in Thornton, Colorado, just outside of Denver. She also had just opened Education Compliance Group, a legal consultancy to school districts and companies specializing in transportation law.
Burns said Education Compliance Group grew to include other consultants with expertise in human resources, employment practice and school transportation operations.
“As our mission statement provides, ‘Our purpose is to help transportation officials provide access to education services without the costly and emotionally draining distractions of legal issues, personnel dilemmas, and operations puzzles,'” she added. “The amazing support and business acumen of my husband, Mike, has been critical to the work that we do.”
In addition to serving as editor of “Legal Routes” since 2003, Burns has authored or co-authored a total of 11 books, pamphlets and video training programs as well as numerous articles in many trade periodicals, including School Transportation News. She said she will continue to write through 2015 on such topics as risk management, legal trends in school transportation law, bullying and harassment, safe school bus stops and driver training. She has also been a frequent speaker at state and national conferences, including the STN EXPO, TSD Conference and the NAPT Summit.
Burns has been an adjunct professor at Adams State University, the University of Denver and Colorado State University. She is also a member of the National and Colorado Councils of School Attorneys.
In addition, she was a partner with Burden & Sloat Attorneys at Law in Boulder, Colorado from 1981 to 1982 and then a sole practitioner from 1982 to 1984 before joining the firm Cohen & Cohen in 1984. Burns left a career practicing law in 1987 to teach high school English in the Adams 12 Five Star Schools district before becoming staff counsel there in September 1988.
Burns first began teaching English in Liverpool, New York in 1969 before moving to Colorado in 1971, where she was an information retrieval specialist for the Northern Colorado Board of Cooperative Educational Services in Longmont and an administrative assistant at the Institute of Behavior Science prior to beginning law school at the University of Colorado in 1978.
