Parents won’t be allowed on buses as monitors

School administrators may someday use paid monitors to watch children on buses. But they’re not prepared to let parents board them — at least not this year.

Principals from Rowan-Salisbury Schools generally opposed that idea when they gathered Tuesday morning, said Gene Miller, assistant superintendent of operations.

Before parents could volunteer to ride buses mornings and afternoons, they should undergo a criminal record check, drug test and health screening, many have said. And — to avoid potential conflicts — parents should ideally ride buses other than the ones their own children ride.

With schools about to close for the summer, those tests and time for training would probably make the process too late to start this year, Miller said.

School officials still may someday develop a policy for parents or paid monitors to ride buses.

“Anybody could say they’re a parent, and children these days have so many step-parents, and sometimes they’re not qualified,” Patty Overcash, a Landis parent, teacher assistant at Landis Elementary and a member of the board of the N.C. Parent-Teacher Association, has said previously. “I’m not so sure a parent riding the bus is the right answer. I say if parents want a second person on a bus, use somebody who is already getting paid by the school system.”

The issue arose two weeks ago when the parents of a student at Corriher-Lipe Middle School asked officials if they could volunteer to ride a bus. It was the first such request that Rowan-Salisbury schools administrators could remember.

“I think this might be an isolated situation,” said Miller, the assistant superintendent. In other situations where problems arise on school buses, “we pretty much deal with the troublemakers.”

New buses come equipped with cameras mounted in them that allow staff to review recordings to determine if children have broken the code of conduct, Miller said.

At China Grove Elementary School, some parents ride buses to and from school — but they do so to volunteer in classrooms, Principal Dr. Robert Bloodworth said. They are able to watch children on the bus.

“It is a good idea to have another adult on the bus,” he said.