School Board Fired a 69-Year-Old Bus Driver for Going 1.4 Miles Off Route to Save a Family — Then His 26 Years of Handwritten Bus Logs Exposed Their Scheme

Four to One

The hearing was held in the elementary school library on Thursday, February 12, at 5:00 p.m., because the cafeteria was being waxed.

Lyle sat at a round table built for second graders with his knees nearly at his chest. Opal sat beside him with three legal pads and her I OBJECT mug, which she had brought, she said, for morale. Across the room, under a poster of a cartoon owl that said READING IS A SUPERPOWER, sat Brent Kowalczyk and the board's attorney, a lean man from an Oklahoma City firm named Spencer Ladd.

The five board members sat at a long table at the front. Superintendent Ike Brumbelow sat at the end, a mild, gray man two years from retirement who looked as if he would rather be anywhere else.

Twenty-two people sat in folding chairs along the shelves. Graciela and Rigo were there. So were Dub's wife and three of the cooks. Lavonne Pipkin, the editor of the weekly Wolf Bluff Gazette, sat in the front row with a steno pad on her knee. She was seventy-two and had covered every board meeting in Wolf Bluff since 1978.

Brent testified first, under oath.

He was good at it. He spoke slowly and sounded reluctant. He said he respected Lyle's years of service. He said nobody doubted Lyle's heart. Then he walked the board through the morning of January 27 minute by minute, from his handwritten dispatch log.

"At 7:09 a.m., I received the first radio call from Bus 7," he said. "Mr. Haskins informed me he was already off route, at a residence on County Road 2610, and that he was transporting injured adults and children on the bus. That was the first I knew of it."

Lyle sat up. Opal put a hand on his arm.

"So he never asked permission," Ladd said.

"He never called at all until he was already there." Brent turned a page. "If he had called me first, I'd have had the sheriff and EMS at that house within minutes. Instead, eleven children were left alone on a running bus on a county road. Then two non-students, one of them a child in medical distress, were loaded onto that same bus and driven without any medical supervision."

"I was the medical supervision," Lyle said.

"Mr. Haskins," Darla said, "you'll have your turn."

Opal stood up for cross. She asked Brent whether the dispatch radio had a recorder. It did not; the district had never bought one. She asked where the Bus 7 radio was now. Brent said it had been found defective on inspection and sent out for repair. She asked where. He said he would have to check.

Then Ladd stood and said, "The district would also like to enter the written statement of a student passenger."

He did not read the name aloud. He did not have to. He passed a single sheet up to the board table, and Darla Fenn read it into the record in her calm, pleasant voice.

Mr. Haskins told us to stay on the bus and left us there alone. The bus was running. I didn't know where he went or when he was coming back. I was scared. Then he brought a sick lady and a baby on the bus and made me help with the baby. I didn't want to. I am fourteen. I don't think a bus driver should make a kid do that.

It was signed in round, careful handwriting. Wren E. Kuykendall.

Lyle looked at the carpet. He thought of Wren's hands on the bag, steady as a metronome. He thought of her face when the ambulance doors closed, white, and then she had sat down on the frozen shoulder of the road and cried, and he had sat down next to her and told her she had done the bravest thing he had seen in thirty-five years.

He also thought of her father. Dale Kuykendall drove a dump truck for Fenn Materials. He had for ten years.

When it was his turn, Lyle told it straight. The generator. The radio call at 6:51. Brent's answer. The direct order. Mateo at the door. The porch room. The bag valve mask. The drive back to the highway, and the ambulance at 7:16.

"Was the call at 6:51 written down anywhere?" Ladd asked.

"It should be on his log."

"It isn't. The log shows 7:09." Ladd smiled pleasantly. "Do you have anything else, Mr. Haskins? A recording? A witness?"

Lyle looked at the empty chair where Wren should have been.

"I had eleven," he said.

At 6:40, the board went into executive session to deliberate. Spencer Ladd packed his briefcase and left to beat the snow back to Oklahoma City. Everyone else was sent out into the hall by the trophy case. Opal paced. Graciela held Lyle's hand without asking first, and he let her.

At 7:25, the library door opened. Darla came out alone and stood in the doorway.

"The board has voted four to one to accept the superintendent's recommendation," she said. "Mr. Haskins's employment with Wolf Bluff Public Schools is terminated, effective tomorrow."

Rigo said something hard in Spanish. Lavonne Pipkin wrote it down, or something like it.

Ardith Coker came out behind Darla with her coat over her arm. She looked at Lyle. She opened her mouth, then closed it, and walked out of the building to her car.

Opal drove him home. Neither of them said much.

The certified letter came Friday at 11:30 in the morning. The mail carrier, a woman whose three children Lyle had driven, made him sign for it and then stood on the porch a moment as if she wanted to say something. She didn't.

It was from the Oklahoma State Department of Education.

Notice of Suspension of School Bus Driver Certification Pending Investigation.

A complaint had been filed by a district official alleging conduct that endangered the health and safety of students. Until the matter was resolved, Lyle W. Haskins was not authorized to operate a school bus in any public school district in Oklahoma.

He had driven children for twenty-six years. In all that time not one child had been hurt on his bus. Not a sprain. Not a split lip.

Attached to the letter was a copy of the complaint. It listed the children Lyle was alleged to have placed in danger on January 27, by name, as if they were counts in a charge.

There were twelve names.

The first one on the list was Mateo Ocampo.