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Article published Jul 29, 2005
COLUMBIA -- The first day of school is just around the corner, but school bus drivers already are facing a test.
Thousands of them must pass a written test before Oct. 1 or they won't be able to drive.
"We're talking about a lot of people," said Donald Tudor, head of transportation at the S.C. Department of Education. "There are over 10,000 licenses that have to be dealt with directly."
Congress passed the new requirement because some states had no standards for school bus drivers. South Carolina has had a school bus driver's license since 2000, Tudor said.
In fact, he said South Carolina's standards are stronger than the new national ones.
"For many states, and looking at it nationally, it's a very good thing to have a standardized test. For South Carolina, it's not a very good thing. We were well ahead," he said.
Because of that, not all school bus drivers will have to take the written test. Drivers who got their license after Oct. 1, 2002, were grandfathered in.
That, however, leaves more than 2,300 who have to take the new 20-question test, and nearly 2,000 more who have to take it plus a general knowledge test and a passenger endorsement test.
The DMV administered the test Wednesday and Thursday at the State Fairgrounds in Columbia, and will do so again today and Saturday. Then, it will travel around the state to administer the test to drivers who could not make it to Columbia.
Pamela Williams took the test Thursday afternoon and said, "It had some tricky questions. But, basically, if you buckle down and study, you'll pretty much get it together."
Drivers need to get at least 16 questions correct to pass.
Tudor said some of the questions can be tricky because they're not specific to South Carolina.
A question may be written so one answer is the best based on all 50 states, but another answer would be better based on South Carolina standards. He says drivers must remember that this is a federal test, not a state one.
If drivers don't pass the exam before Oct. 1, it could leave some local districts with a driver shortage.
"It's going to be a challenge for some of the districts," Tudor said. "Many of them use part-time drivers and, until they return to work in the next couple of weeks, many of them might not even know they have to do this.
"And they certainly wouldn't be around to receive training materials to prepare. So when they come to work the first week in August, they'll have the rest of August and September to prepare."
While the federal test is not likely to make public school drivers any better, since they've already met similar standards, it might make our roads safer, Tudor said, adding that for the first time, private and parochial school bus drivers will also have to pass the exam.
Mike Friar drives a church bus and took the test Thursday.
"Oh, I think it's a good idea, because there's some language in the rules and the laws that I think people should be aware of. So it just makes them a little bit more careful about unloading students and loading students and what the laws require of them," he said.