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Thursday, November 20, 2003

Bus Driver's Arrest Sparks Outrage

By Kathy Louise Schuit
Mountain View Telegraph
    State and local officials are scrambling to put new safeguards in place after the arrest of an intoxicated school bus driver at Edgewood Elementary School on Friday.
    New Mexico Secretary of Education Veronica Garcia issued a news release Tuesday citing the Edgewood incident as the reason for forming "a School Bus Safety Task Force to immediately meet and bring recommendations to her regarding school bus safety."
    Likewise, Moriarty Schools Superintendent Karen Couch released a statement about the incident and expressed the district's outrage and desire for a full investigation.
    "We are extremely angry that students were endangered like this, and we are pursuing an investigation to determine how this man could have been sent by the contractor as a substitute driver. We are, of course, very grateful to the Plant Transportation driver for her prompt report," Couch said.
    According to Couch's release:
    A substitute bus driver, identified by State Police as Gregory A. Sage, 39, of Moriarty, was arrested at the elementary school after another bus driver observed what she thought were signs of intoxication in Sage. The other driver immediately reported her observations to the principal.
    Sage's bus— number 13— was detained at the school while the principal called State Police and notified school administration.
    Plant School Transportation, the bus contractor that employed Sage to drive the bus, was then notified that the bus was being detained and why.
    The bus company sent another driver to complete the route, although many parents had already opted to pick up their children at the school.
    Field sobriety tests administered by State Police resulted in Sage's immediate arrest on charges of driving under the influence of an intoxicating liquor.
    School district officials later discovered that before his arrival at Edgewood Elementary, Sage had already completed one bus route that afternoon— the bus had been loaded with students from Mountainview Elementary.
    Joseph Garcia, the school district's new transportation coordinator and a former law enforcement officer, intends to ask State Police to also pursue charges of child endangerment against Sage, Couch said.
    Sage appeared at a video arraignment in Santa Fe County Magistrate Court on Tuesday, where he pleaded guilty to the DWI charge. So far, no other charges have been filed in the case.
    At the bus company, co-owner David Plant said he deeply regrets the incident but stands behind the company's 22 years of safely getting students to and from school.
    Subsequent television and newspaper reports said searches of Sage's past driving and criminal records revealed four prior DWI convictions, but Plant said his searches, conducted through state Motor Vehicle Division records, turned up only one.
    "If I'd known he had four previous— no way, but one doesn't necessarily indicate a problem," Plant said.
    Sage was hired as a maintenance employee, Plant said. He and all the bus company's maintenance personnel are licensed by the state to drive school buses so they can act as substitute drivers when needed.
    They all go through the same state-required background checks and random drug and alcohol testing as regular route drivers, Plant said.
    The FBI fingerprint check on Sage showed the same 1987 DWI conviction indicated by MVD records and no others, he said.
    But an online search of court records reveals three previous DWI arrests in the 1980s. In each case, Sage entered guilty pleas.
    Plant said he feels he has followed the state's guidelines for background checks by consulting MVD and FBI records, and he doesn't understand why the 1980 convictions weren't passed on to those agencies by the courts.
    "Why aren't they sharing records?" he asked. "How many different places do we have to go to check? If there was a central database where we could find out everything— that would be great."
    Even so, Plant said he plans to step up the company's random drug and alcohol tests. Instead of testing 10 percent of the licensed bus drivers twice each year for alcohol consumption as required by the state, Plant said he will now test 50 percent.
    Additionally, Education Secretary Garcia said she has directed Gilbert Perea, state transportation secretary, to contact Moriarty Municipal Schools officials to ascertain the level of safety requirements the district places on bus contractors.
    "New Mexico school buses have one of the best safety records nationwide," said Tuesday's release from Garcia's office. "They are required to be inspected two times each year, and school bus drivers must complete extensive annual training programs and conduct daily pre-trip inspections.
    "But with this allegation and another in Cuba in 2002, it is time to put everything on the table, from hiring practices to bus driver benefits, in order to ensure that high-quality bus drivers are on all school buses."