By MJ Slaby of the Knoxville News Sentinel
From a single medical examiner's certificate to pages of license documents, employment history and letters from Knox County Schools, the files of local school bus drivers vary from driver to driver and are inconsistent in the type of information provided.
Schools Superintendent Jim McIntyre and Russ Oaks, the district's chief operating officer, said variance is to be expected with multiple contractors. The records meet the compliance needs they were designed to serve, both said in a phone interview.
In the months following the Dec. 2, 2014 school bus crash that killed two students and a teacher's aide, the News Sentinel made a public records request for all records of eligible bus drivers and contractors at the time of the crash.
The district has provided 40 of the 475 driver files and is releasing them approximately every few weeks to the News Sentinel in alphabetical groups by last name of the driver.
Of the 40 files released, each of the file's contents range from one page to 22 pages. Some have all of the compliance documentation that the district leaders gave as examples and other only have portions of that information.
In some cases, files indicate if the driver was removed from the eligibility roster at any point. Also in the files are a mix of employment history, approval letters and complaints.
The school district maintains the files on each eligible bus driver on behalf of the contractors, said McIntyre and Rick Grubb, director of the district's transportation department. They said the district also helps contractors meet requirements, such as arranging for drug and alcohol testing.
And the files are a "repository for compliance-related information" such as medical exams, licenses, drug and alcohol test results, Oaks said.
He added that the district regularly opens the files to add annual information such as physical exams.
The files in their current form serve their purpose of compliance and having information constantly accessible to the district, McIntyre and Oaks said.
Because the district can access the files at any time that allows for an immediate resource whenever there are questions or issues, McIntyre said.
"Instead of post oversight, we are taking a proactive role," he said, adding that the district uses the files to know with certainty that drivers are qualified.
Knox County Schools recently received the results of an outside transportation review, commissioned to improve the district's transportation, that said the district's school bus crashes were double the recommended guideline. It said there was a lack of oversight and the bus drivers are underpaid and the transportation system underfunded.
In the review, consultants recommended an added position in school bus safety.
The review praised the district for having a "fairly efficient system" that includes handling enormous amounts of paper and record-keeping, but recommended moving to an electronic system.
McIntyre has addressed some of the review's recommendations in his proposal for the fiscal year 2017 budget. His budget increases funding for bus contractors and sets aside funds for a new bus safety position and a comprehensive school bus driver training program.
He and Oaks said it's too soon to know if the new transportation safety hire and training program will impact what is in the files of drivers.
However, they, along with Grubb, said the report recommended moving to electronic filing, something they hope to see happen.
District officials have previously stressed that the bus driver files are not personnel files, and Oaks said it's up to each of the current 71 contractors if they maintain separate personnel files in addition to the files with Knox County Schools.
Oaks and Grubb said the document variance can be for a several reasons.
Some of the older files have less information because there were less compliance requirements before about the year 2000, Grubb said. But also each contractor is different and the same information can be provided in different ways, Oaks said.
For example, he said in some cases a driver's doctor may submit a medical examiner's certificate for proof of a physical, while others provide the entire physical.
Medical information is redacted when a file is provided through a public records request so if the latter is the case, Oaks said the physical was pulled from the file without indication it was there.
And sometimes there is information from previous employers, but not always, he said.
Grubb added that there are a fair amount of people that apply and then don't take the job, so their file stays until that person is no longer eligible, likely when their physical expires after a year.
