Principal rides bus to reassure students who witnessed crash

By Emily Richmond

Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2003 | 10:55 a.m.

Anne Grisham, principal of Clark County's newest magnet elementary school, knew some of her students may have been nervous Tuesday while making their way home along the same route they had been on when their school bus crashed into a motorcycle the day before.

So when the dismissal bell rang at 3:05 p.m., Grisham, principal of the Sandy Miller Elementary Academy for International Studies on Lake Mead Boulevard, boarded Clark County School District Bus No. 938 to share the journey.

"I wanted them to know they were safe and that we were there to support them," Grisham said this morning. "We had a nice time. The kids asked if I would go with them at least once a week, and I told them I'd be riding along from time to time."

Even though Monday was just the first day of the new school year, Grisham already knew many of her students from her years as principal at nearby Fay Herron Elementary School. The bus was headed to Herron, one of the relay sites for parents to drop off and pick up students in the magnet program, when the accident occurred.

While there have been calls and visits from parents to the school about the accident, the majority have been offers of support, Grisham said.

"Parents have been coming by to say they understand and ask how they can help," Grisham said. "We've had outstanding support from the community and from the district."

The rookie bus driver, Marvin Mosely, 22, was ferrying 45 students when he drove into the path of an oncoming motorcycle, police said. The motorcyclist, identified Tuesday as 48-year-old Sidney Ellis McIntire, was thrown from his Harley-Davidson and pronounced dead at the scene.

The cause of the accident is under investigation although preliminary reports suggest Mosely failed to yield the right of way, police said. Mosely has been taken off the job pending the outcome of the investigation, school district officials said.

Vanessa Morales, 8, was seated directly behind the driver on Monday when the bus collided with the oncoming motorcyclist, her mother, Adela Gonzalez, said.

"She was nervous and crying," Adela Gonzalez said, when she picked up Vanessa up at Herron.

Vanessa's 7-year-old brother, Richard, handled the accident a little better, Gonzalez said. She attributed that to his young age.

Gonzalez said she and her children talked about what they saw. They asked her to drive them to school Tuesday.

"They were afraid to ride the bus," she said.

But after some coaxing from their mother, the children boarded the bus -- with a new driver.

"She was a good bus driver," Richard said. "She didn't crash like the bad bus driver."

The school district requires drivers to be at least 21 years old and complete 47 hours of behind-the-wheel training in addition to 40 hours of classroom training. State law requires just 10 hours each of classroom and behind-the-wheel training.

"We've been doing four times what the state said we had to do," said Sherrie Morton, a driving instructor in the school district's transportation department. "Safety has always been our primary priority."

The average school bus driver in the district is about 40 years old and often retired from another job, such as the military or law enforcement, Morton said. The district has nearly 1,000 drivers transporting about 120,000 students each school day.

Morton declined to discuss Mosely except to say he had completed the district's training requirements before heading out for his first day behind the wheel Monday.

The school district has 1,180 buses traveling 987 routes, carrying more than 120,000 students each day, district officials said. District buses drove 50.3 million miles last year, school district officials said.

There were 261 accidents during the 2002-03 school year involving district buses, with 117 a result of driver error, Officer Jose Montoya, spokesman for Metro Police, said.

Of those 261 accidents only 27 resulted in injuries reported at the scene, said Kimberly Harris, claims specialist for the district's risk management department. In the past 10 years there have been four incidents involving school buses that resulted in fatalities. Only one of those deaths was a student -- a boy running across a six-lane road was struck by a school bus in 1997, Harris said.

The Clark County School District's transportation safety record has typically been one of the best of the nation's larger metropolitan school districts, said state Sen. Dennis Nolan, R-Las Vegas, who has worked as a transportation safety and loss prevention consultant.

Nolan, vice chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, said he reviewed the district's safety record during the last legislative session while considering a bill seeking to increase the training requirements for school bus drivers. The bill did not pass out of the Legislature.

"I know the district has put a heavy emphasis on training and continuing education for their drivers," Nolan said. "Their safety record has always been above the standard."