Jim Beekman, 53, just wrapped up his first week as the head of transportation for the Hillsborough County School District. He has read some, but not all of the media reports about last year's worker complaints. He has ideas for fixing the driver shortage and says kids are far safer on a bus than in their parents' cars. Here are excerpts from a recent interview he gave to Tampa Bay Times education writer Marlene Sokol.
A consultant recommended replacing about 350 of Hillsborough's buses immediately because they were 18, 19 and 20 years old. The district is on a schedule to replace 100 buses a year. Is that fast enough?
I would have to have the opportunity to meet with the fleet folks and look at that. But I will share with you that when I talked to folks in the state, they felt like the level of efficiency is very high and they have absolute confidence in the personnel here. So I have that same confidence.
The district is doing a lot of work in the area of student behavior and making sure bus drivers can deal with situations when students don't behave. It's a sensitive issue, especially when parents get involved.
It is. Children's behavior can be challenging. So we carry a responsibility to make sure drivers have tools to work with that behavior. Whenever I meet with new drivers, I always share with them that the second most important thing they are going to learn in the training process is how to drive the bus. The first most important is to take care of our kids. You've got to love kids in order to do this job.
What are the right tools?
A lot of it is behavior modification plans. Respect is something that we need to give. Kids need to see consistency in drivers, they need to see consistency in bus attendants and monitors in the way that they're treated and the way they act. There's a lot of programs out there that are successfully used in the schools that we bring into the bus. We're a moving classroom.
After you were named, we heard about problems when you ran the department in Osceola County. There were racial issues, morale issues, allegations that turned out to be unfounded.
I think the key word to use, they were allegations. What I walked into in Orange County was very similar to the issues that were surrounding Hillsborough County. There was a lack of credibility with the community, there was a lack of credibility with the board and a lot of the administrators. And I think you'll see that we got a lot of that turned around quite a bit.
But I'm talking about the county before that, Osceola County, where things were quite turbulent.
Correct. And again I go back to, those were allegations.
A lot of people in Hillsborough brought forth issues about this department. Do you now go back and talk to folks who had the issues?
There's a lot of things that happened in the past that just can't be changed. What you need to do to go from this point forward is identify what systematically can be done to put changes in place.
What can be done about the driver shortage?
We did a series of job fairs in Orange County that were very successful. We started the year with no shortage of bus drivers. (To recruit), you need to go out to where the folks are. You can't have an expectation that they will come to you. So we held job fairs in different areas of the community.
Tell us about your background.
I started in 1983 as a diesel mechanic for a school district as a way to pay for college. I was a shop foreman, I worked in the parts side, I was a director of transportation, I went through the state certification class on teaching driver training. I've been involved at the state level on various committees, president of the state association. I absolutely love the field.
Some communities are cutting service or having parents pay if their children are in a magnet or IB program. What is your philosophy?
My philosophy is, we are a gateway to education. We look at Hillsborough and the awesome magnet program. What a great opportunity for the kids. I'm in favor of using buses whenever we can. Students are eight times safer on a school bus than riding with their parents and 50 times safer on a school bus than when they are driven by other kids.
So philosophically I'm in favor of, whenever you can, to maximize the use of that capital investment and transport those kids.