Thumbnail photo by Persephone Rose
Before handing over the results of a vote of no confidence against the transportation director, Shawn Michael Schubert, president of CSEA Great Northern 178, urged Del Norte Unified School District trustees to listen to their bus drivers.
A few minutes later, those bus drivers described “serious operational deficiencies” they say are occurring under Christopher Armington’s leadership. Those deficiencies include a failure to show up to work on time, a lack of communication, rescheduled or canceled training sessions and routes not being properly reviewed.
In one instance, according to Trish Melvin, a bus driver who was hired in 2021, Armington’s failure to show up for work resulted in a student standing on U.S. 101 for three hours waiting for a bus.
“She didn’t know when the bus was coming and her parents were already at work,” Melvin told Redwood Voice Community News on Monday. “And then all of the Smith River (high school) students stood out there until, I believe, it was 8:15 or 8:30 before the first bus could get out there. By the time they got to the office, they already probably missed their first class.”
Members of the union that represents DNUSD’s classified staff voted 16-14 to adopt a vote of no confidence against Armington. The vote took place March 10, Schubert told DNUSD trustees on March 26, just before spring break. Reading the resolution into the record, Schubert stated that the union’s action “represents a collective determination” that the actions of the transportation director has led to a loss of trust and confidence that impacts morale and operational stability.
The resolution urges DNUSD Superintendent Jeff Harris and the Board of Trustees to conduct an impartial investigation and take corrective action. Though Harris did not attend last week’s school board meeting, Schubert left a copy of the resolution for the superintendent as well as the human resources director.
Harris and Armington couldn’t be reached for comment.
Shortly after the school year started, Armington admitted to the Board of Trustees that students were getting to school nearly an hour late. The Friday before students were set to return to class, the school district stated that its bus routes had been consolidated from 15 down to 13. The transportation department also lost two bus drivers, further whittling those 13 routes down to 11.
Armington asked parents to “assist by taking their students to school rather than them being super late.”
CSEA filed a grievance on behalf of transportation department employees on Sept. 22. The grievance alleged that the transportation director was out of compliance with several stipulations outlined in Article 17 of the union’s bargaining agreement with DNUSD. Those violations include not giving drivers the opportunity to review bus routes before bidding; failing to maximize the number of full-time, or eight-hour routes, to the greatest extent feasible; and assigning field trips to bus drivers on a rotating basis.
Noting that bus drivers’ retirement and health benefits are tied to the route hours listed in their contract, Melvin said the transportation director’s failure to maximize the number of full-time routes negatively impacted her.
“Because he had multiple buses scheduled to be at multiple schools at the same time, we were running 40 minutes behind to two locations,” she said. “My insurance is based on seven hours a day, but yet I’m working nine hours to do the route I bid on and I’m not getting benefits for those extra two.”
Another bus driver, Andrea Wadsworth, told Redwood Voice that Armington’s failure to maximize bus routes meant that though neither she nor her coworkers were contracted to full-time routes, they were working 12 hours a day.
Wadsworth said her routes mirror Melvin’s routes. If she drives Redwood Elementary School kids in the morning, Melvin sees those same kids in the afternoon. Wadsworth also drives students from Joe Hamilton Elementary School and Del Norte High School. She said she drives between 125 and 180 miles daily, which could include covering for a field trip or the afterschool program in Smith River.
According to Wadsworth, in addition to failing to maximize the number of full-time routes, Armington didn’t proofread the routes he made available. She said she often does a trial run of her routes before school starts “‘cause you don’t know what you’re getting on the first week,” but Armington’s routes had her in four different places at the same time.
They also had her and other bus drivers making turns over private roads to get back onto the highway, Wadsworth said. In one instance, Wadsworth said the route she received had driving her bus through Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation housing to return to the district office rather than taking Ocean View Drive in Smith River.
Wadsworth told Redwood Voice that the former transportation director and the retired California Highway Patrol officer who trained her said that would be a bad idea.
“When I got to my bid sheet, I knew I was going to take my same route even though it was all scrambled,” she said, “because I have to figure out how to get those kids to school on time.”
Wadsworth said that tardiness often causes anxiety in the students she drives. Walking into a class up to 40 minutes late also means the teacher has to catch them up to speed.
“The whole thing was a domino effect in my opinion,” she said.
Another concern Wadsworth raised at the March 26 DNUSD Board meeting included required training sessions being routinely canceled and applicants not receiving training in a timely manner.
“This leaves current drivers overworked, stressed and stretched thin in conditions that are not conducive to safety,” she said.
As part of the grievance settlement, DNUSD agreed to redesign the bus routes so that there were six eight-hour routes with the remaining routes maximized to the greatest extent possible. Before November, there was only one eight-hour route, according to the agreement.
DNUSD also agreed to make the bus drivers whose benefits suffered whole, which includes “remedying all CalPERS contributions, sick leave and vacation accrual and health and welfare benefit contributions.” The school district promised to work with the bus drivers and CSEA to determine the extent of the impact to their benefits. DNUSD also reiterated that while drivers may support and provide feedback on how routes are established, it’s the transportation director’s sole responsibility to develop those routes.
The grievance settlement also addresses special trips and field trips, mentioning that an interim director of transportation has remedied a “special trip assignment protocol.”
The grievance settlement also addresses the combining of routes. According to the settlement, the transportation director was out of compliance with a stipulation in CSEA’s bargaining agreement stating that route combination assignments are based on seniority. Under the settlement, DNUSD will resume that practice.
Schubert told Redwood Voice that it wasn’t Armington who agreed to resolve the concerns CSEA raised, but Harris. Rather than working to resolve the grievance by a deadline Human Resource had given him, Armington went on a two-month leave, Schubert said.
“We felt like he was avoiding the whole situation,” Schubert said, adding that the union had met with Armington twice before the human resources director told him he needed to resolve the issues. “Jeff Harris fixed it and then (Armington) came back, but before he came back we did a vote of no confidence to show the district we have issues, maybe you should look at this a little bit better.”
Melvin compared the vote of no confidence to a petition. She said that anyone in CSEA Great Northern 178 could vote on whether they worked for transportation or not.
When asked what she wants out of the no confidence resolution, Melvin said she feels Armington should no longer be the transportation director.
“We were a department that had never filed a grievance before,” she said. “The front office, our superintendent, our assistant superintendent, none of those guys even knew what it took to be a bus driver … didn’t even know what transportation was. They just knew we were back there and we drove buses. They have learned so much about us that they don’t want to hear from us anymore.”
