From driving for yellow cab to driving a yellow school bus, Shirley Magerl knows the value of making sure people get where they need to go.
Magerl has been driving people around in one form or another for 50 years as of September. Currently a driver for ABC Transit, she drove school buses for Yellow Cab, and Pittsburgh Transportation shuttle buses.
“I started at Bell Telephone, and I hated working nights and weekends, so I went to community college and worked there,” she explained. “I wasn’t real crazy about the idea of being with snotty adults all the time.”
It’s here that Magerl’s unique personality as one of Sto-Rox’s “Golden Girls” - a group of experienced women bus drivers - shines through.
“I had a friend that worked in the office of Yellow Cab, and she said, ‘Why don’t you come over here and work in the office and we have some school buses and you know, if you want to try that we can do that too.’”
She jumped at the chance. She was all of 19 years old, fresh out of Pittsburgh’s Perry High School.
“I just like being out on the road. I like being out with the kids.”
Bus drivers are a critical part of every school day, getting students to and from the classroom. Sto-Rox Transportation Coordinator Tina Nagel is thankful for drivers like Magerl, her Golden Girl colleagues, and the rest.
“We are covered basically for every run this year,” said Nagel. “As we have new needs, that’s where we struggle. We’re lucky that we have our dedicated core, our Golden Girls. They could honestly retire at any time.”
Her main concern is this: While Sto-Rox School District only runs three schools, the district is responsible for transporting students to about 40 schools.
“We serve the charter schools and the non-public schools as well, within a 10-mile radius of the district. That’s what we’re legally responsible for,” she explained. On top of that, there are field trips, sports teams, and after-school programs, and that can strain Nagel, her drivers, and most critically, her budget.
“The district only receives - for a charter school student - $385 for the entire year. That’s it,” she said. “There’s no district in the state of Pennsylvania that earns more than 40% of their transportation costs back from the subsidy.” (In this case, a subsidy is money provided by the state to assist school districts like Sto-Rox with their transportation needs.)
Sto-Rox School District contracts with ABC Transit. Bus drivers have to be recertified every four years, and they must pass a physical every year. Of course, some things have changed since Magerl started.
“You didn’t need a CDL (Commercial Driver’s License),” she said. “All you needed was a Pennsylvania driver’s license, and you got the keys and you were on your own to figure out the lighting system and anything else.”
Technology has also changed. Cameras provide multiple angles of every moment on a bus. Of course, the more human eyes there are on a bus, the better.
“We’re very fortunate in this district that we have bus monitors that ride with us,” said Magerl. She praised her bus monitor, Sto-Rox graduate Elizabeth Brenk, as one of the best in the business. “There’s no touching, there’s no eating, there’s no calling each other names. We run this ship very well.”
Magerl welcomes anyone who wants to drive a school bus, though in her estimation, not everyone is right for the job.
“You have to have the personality for it, and you have to have the kind of personality that can deal with road construction and weather,” she explained.
There are also other considerations, said Nagel.
You have to pass all of the screenings, whether that’s the driving certification, the drug screening, or the (child) clearances,” she said, though she agreed it can be a rewarding job.
Said Magerl, “It’s a very good job for someone who wants Christmas, Easter, and Summers off.”
Education runs in Magerl’s family. She’s a grandmother, and a mother of two daughters - one is a teacher for Pittsburgh Public Schools, the other works at UPMC Presbyterian. Her oldest grandson works at Brashear High School. As Magerl points out, driving a school bus can be a good job, especially for people with families.
“I raised my kids that way, I worked - they went to school - and I was home with them all summer,” she said. “It could be the right fit for a lot of people, you just have to know how to digest it. You can’t take it home with you, it’s like anybody’s job that they have. It’s a great job for people that like to be on the road.”
The road, being a place where Shirley Magerl is very comfortable, a place where Tina Nagel and the entire Sto-Rox community depend on her and the “Golden Girls” to deliver every day.
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Links & Notes
• Sto-Rox School District: Transportation Webpage
• ABC Transit: Learn More Here
• Sto-Rox School Board just approved an agreement to take advantage of Pennsylvania’s Stop Arm Law. You can learn more about that in this recap of Thursday’s school board meeting.
• This week is National School Bus Safety Week. You can learn more about that initiative here.