TOPSHAM

They are in charge of getting 2,600 students a day to school safely; and then back home.

That’s at least 36 buses and drivers traveling about 660,000 miles across the district annually.

Bill Donovan says collecting and dispersing students, however, isn’t all that goes into being transportation director for School Administrative District 75. He’s done the job for the last six years but has stepped down from the position and will continue his part-time position as the district’s energy manager.

Taking his place is a district alumnus, Adam Mayo, who is excited to enter what for him is a whole new field. He’s been working to learn the ropes — and routes — before the big day arrives Sept. 2 — the first day of school in SAD 75.

Mayo, 30 (he’ll turn 31 on Thursday), graduated from Mt. Ararat High School in 2002, and then studied criminal justice at Elmira College, the University of Southern Maine and then transferred to St. Joseph’s College. He took a position in 2004 working with juveniles for the Department of Corrections for the state of Maine in South Portland, and worked there the next 3.5 years. It was rewarding work, Mayo said, and he liked that he never knew what would come through the door on a given day. A lot of the job was role modeling.

But looking for something closer to home, Mayo shifted gears and took a position with the Bowdoin College safety and security office, and about a year later became an overnight security supervisor at Bates College where he worked for about seven years.

Yes, large bus transportation has always been a love for Mayo, who was probably the only teen at his high school already subscribing to the School Bus Fleet magazine.

Mayo pulls away from his public service jobs and work with juveniles as he looks at kids riding the buses.

“Who knows what their life is like,” he said, stressing, “bus drivers are sometimes the first people or adults these kids see in the morning and sometimes the last one they see at night.”

Donovan adds some spend more time with the bus driver than their parents. There also are bullying and suicide prevention mandates that need to be addressed on buses.

Bus drivers are driving with 50-60 people aboard behind them, and “they have a job to do to get these kids there safely,” Mayo said.

“It takes a special person to be able to do that,” he said, “and to deal with issues going on and paying attention to the road and safety of kids crossing the street.”

Mayo drove buses four summers for the Lewiston recreation department, so he has some first-hand experience.

“I loved it,” he said.

Donovan, who also had coached football as Mt. Ararat High School for 12 years, was asked to fill in as the transportation director when a vacancy opened up. He worked on systems on airplanes for 23 years for the Navy. He graduated from Brunswick High School, joined the Navy and eventually got “stationed in my backyard.”

To him, the bus garage is just like a miniature squadron.

“You’ve got your maintenance department — which I ran in a squadron — and you’ve got your operational side,” Donovan said, “so it was kind of familiar to me.”

He likes all the challenges. He developed software the state provided SAD 75 to meet the district’s needs, helping organize bus routes and meet a goal he faced when hired to lower riding times particularly for students from the longer-reaching edges of the district in Harpswell and Bowdoin.

It is recommended buses be parked on hard top, so Donovan is proud he helped finally see a paved parking lot for the buses come to fruition. And the bus drivers are ecstatic they won’t be wading through mud puddles anymore. Five years ago, he conceptualized the parking, he said, after “our buses were corroding. They were sitting on damp earth all the time.” The liquid calcium chloride used on the roads in the winter also are tough on the buses, even though the bottoms of the buses are washed. Moisture also would radiate up from the ground on a sunny day.

“My favorite thing was being the guy that started the ball rolling for a snow day,” said Donovan.

He’d get up early, check the weather and radar online, listen to first weather report at 4:15 a.m., call the Sagadahoc County Sheriff ’s Department and public works director, and often drive around himself so he could make a recommendation to the superintendent. The weather can differ greatly between Bowdoin and Basin Point in Harpswell.

The bus drivers take ownership of their bus and the routes; many stay for many years and have driven generations of children to and from school. Donovan has tried to have the drivers keep the same student from kindergarten to high school.

“It’s a good place to work,” Donovan said.

But it’s more than just figuring out which way the bus goes. Bus drivers can’t send misbehaving riders to the principal’s office. People don’t see the transportation director working with the assistant principals at Mt. Ararat Middle School and Mt. Ararat High School, working to fix behavior issues so a student doesn’t have to be thrown off the bus.

The bus drivers who are consistent, firm, fair and friendly, Mayo said, “have got it.” They’re also the ones who know their students, learned their routes and are able to control their buses as a result. They care about the students “and it shows.”

“There’s so much more than collecting them, bringing them to school and then bringing them home,” Donovan said. “The drivers get involved in behavioral management too.”

Mayo adds that this generation of adults needs to start changing to meet the needs of a technology-immersed youth combating bullying and harassment through social media.

The staff at the transportation department is a team, Mayo said, and he is just a part of that team.

Donovan, whose last day as transportation director was Friday, said, “There’s no school for this. There’s just previous jobs,” that get you ready for this challenge.

It will be a new field for Mayo but “I’m very excited and I think I’m ready for it.”

ADAM MAYO, 30 (he’ll turn 31 on Thursday), graduated from Mt. Ararat High School in 2002, and then studied criminal justice at Elmira College, the University of Southern Maine and then transferred to St. Joseph’s College.