Some districts are so poorly funded that they find themselves in situations like the above. The pay is awful in those districts and the driver turn over is very fast and so is the dispatch and mechanic and aid turn over. It's a bad situation. The buses are old and in some cases on their last leg. It doesn't make much sense really when it's these drivers who are getting these kids to school for the very parents who did their time who now hold the professional positions that pay so much better but the drivers are getting hammered for being losers. Why is that? If school bus drivers disappeared the white collar workers would be in one hell of a pickle, you can't get your kids to school when your supposed to be at work. Pay for these drivers/dispatchers/mechanics would then go up to where it should be in the first place and then districts could then afford to hire people who actually care about being a school bus driver/mechanic/aid for special needs.
I'm lucky that I live in a district that doesn't suffer like this. The pay is excellent for a part time job, way above minimum wage by quite a bit. $22/HR to be exact. I have a brand new bus with multiple camera's on board that allow the transportation director to review anything that occurs on the bus whenever he needs to, no need for investigations. I'm also lucky that I have a job I truly enjoy but if I lived and worked in a district like the one in the article, where funding is almost absent I wouldn't touch that job with a ten foot pole and I'd blame the very people with the resources to make it better for not making it better. A crappy work environment will attract workers with crappy attitudes who don't give two

about school policies for tobacco products. These are *your* kids riding these buses.
I am sorry if you think I implied that bus drivers and/or blue collar workers are losers, as that is not what my post said.
Over the years of reading on internet forums, the people who post w/ (false) bravado saying they will not abide the regs and laws of their workplace
appear to be those who have jobs they feel are "throwaways"....
....my point was that in reality, since most people rely on good jobs to pay mortgage and keep a roof over their children's head, I've never met anyone in real life, who throws a good job away over a "habit", (and I did include 'especially if it took them 4-8 years of education' on top of just being able to secure a good steady job with a good steady salary.)
These chest-beating posts that I read on internet forums, where workers are telling us "how it is" and "what they will and won't put up with" doesn't
actually match what is going on out there in reality. Unless, like I said, they have an unskilled job and can just go find another one a week later ---- or they live in mom's basement and have no economic pressures.
Unless you are in a highly valued position where headhunters can find you 20 companies who desperately want your skillset, or, you have a job that is a throwaway, what I was saying is that few, if any, people are openly defying the rules of their company when it means they won't be able to pay their mortgage if they lose their job.
That is reality.
I like to keep in mind that, when on a hobby board, whether it be vaping or horse racing, where like-minded people come together to discuss things, belies that off the internet, in real practice, things are not the same. This is true of all hobby and special interest boards, not just vaping. For instance, while on hobby boards, it appears that nobody uses, or should be using, vape pens to quit smoking.......yet, while out in the real world, I *rarely* encounter people with big mods out vaping in public, unless in a vape B&M, or maybe in a very large urban city.
I've been to college football games, 4 casinos in 4 different states, other major sporting and social events, restaurants and bars........Maybe 1 in 100 people (that I have seen) are vaping on anything larger than a vape pen or at most, an istick-mini type device. Blu's and Njoy's are still flying off the shelves in most of the smoke shops and enjoy rather brisk sales.
On most hobby boards, when you are in that community, surrounded by others who think similarly, it's easy to believe that your * common interest* is more wide-spread and/or important to the mainstream than it actually is. Hence some of the posts I see where a political candidate is going to stake a major portion of their candidacy on vaping issues.
I'm sorry, but there just aren't enough numbers to support a candidate doing that.