by Jan Anderson and Darby Harris
For seventy years, the Sologub family of Elk Park has been transporting students from the rural Jefferson County community to school in Butte.
No matter the weather (and the high mountain flats are renowned for fierce whiteouts and sudden snow storms that erase the landmarks), a Sologub has been behind the school bus wheel, making sure students reach their classrooms and then return home again safely.
In more than thirty years of driving the route, Terri Sologub can only recall one morning when she was not able to get the students to school. On that day, she was directed by law enforcement not to take the bus out on the road after a massive snow storm, she says.
Her husband Joe, whose uncle started the bus company in 1937, credits careful preparation with the service’s exceptional record. They always had extras on hand – batteries, drivers, and even a spare bus – to deal with unexpected problems, he says.
Planning ahead is critical, he says. “You’re carrying a pretty precious commodity,” he says.
When classes resume this fall, though, the bus service of seven decades will be nowhere to be found, unable to weather a storm of financial circumstances.
SERVICE STARTED IN 1937
The Elk Park area, scattered with ranches, once had three country schools: Woodville, Elk Park and Trask. All three closed decades ago, and the Sologub family began transporting students to Butte schools.
Even though Elk Park is within the district borders for Jefferson High and Boulder Elementary, Butte is closer and the route less challenging. So, the two districts operated for years with Boulder schools paying the Sologubs and Butte educating the bus riders.
Joe’s dad took over the route in about 1940 and Joe’s wife Terri became the primary driver in 1975.
Each school day, Terri arose by 6 a.m. to start her way southwest. Nosing the 42-passenger bus out of the family’s shining white farmstead, she turned the bus southwest. Along the way, she picked up between one and two dozen students from kindergartners to high school seniors.
This past school year, the first to board each day was a little boy who “always just came bounding with a smile,” laughs Terri. “So if you didn’t feel like going before you got there, you did then.”
Once all of the school children were aboard, the bus drove down from the heights and into Butte, making stops at three schools – Whittier for the littlest passengers, East Middle School for the young teens, and Butte High for those edging toward adulthood.
In all, the route took about a hour most mornings and another hour in the evening.
Terri always made sure the students were not just left at the bus stop. If they were old enough to drive themselves, there would usually be a waiting car at the bus stop for the remainder of their travels home, and Terri would wait to be sure the car started. For the younger kids, she would wait for them to be picked up. If that didn’t happen, the kids would go home with Terri.
“Many a night we brought kids home if their parents were delayed,” said Joe.
Every year, the faces changed, but many bore resemblances. Over the years, the Sologubs have transported three generations of Elk Park children.
“This year we had three graduate and there will be two little kindergartners going in the fall,” said Terri. “It just kind of goes like that.”
MEMORABLE MOMENTS FROM THE ROUTE
Terri smiles as she recalls some times on the bus that stand out in her memory.
Overall, the kids were just excellent, she says. There was one time a ball rolled underneath the gas pedal and stuck, and a few other amusing incidents, but generally the kids were very well behaved.
“Terri was pretty tough,” says Joe. “She’d give them the rules and the regs (including ‘no gum’ and ‘no toys’) and they listened.”
There were the days when the weather could have used a few “rules and regs.” Besides whiteouts and slick roads, there were the blizzards.
“We pushed snow a lot of times,” says Terri, quickly noting that the county’s road crew and highway workers did an excellent job of clearing the bus route. “They had always made at least one pass with the plow,” she says, but with the sky dumping that could still mean a lot of snow to push with the bus.
The only time Terri was not able to get the bus to school due to weather, she got a law enforcement call telling her not to take it out. Later in the day, after road crews had cleared the roads, she took Joe to the airport in Butte for a trip.
“Butte hadn’t gotten the storm,” she laughs.
Weather and playthings were not the only challenges.
There were several times the bus passed through road blocks as officials sought escaped criminals, she says. “That was kind of nerve wracking,” she says.
But the kids were the joy of the work, says the veteran driver.
READY TO CONTINUE SERVING
Despite the fact that Joe has been retired for almost a decade from more than thirty years with the Forest Service, he says he and Terri were ready to continue the bus route for a while longer.
It is a service that is vital to maintaining a community identity, he says. But financial considerations intervened.
“It’s a sad deal,” he reflects. “I hate to see our little valley lose the bus service that’s been going for seventy years.”
The financial storm clouds began gathering a couple of years ago.
THE FINANCIAL PICTURE
Boulder’s schools, finding themselves struggling with tight budgets, reviewed transportation costs for all bus routes. They found they were spending about $40,000 each year on the Elk Park bus service, including about $6000 in fuel, an amount sure to rise, explained Boulder Superintendent Bob Klein. Although some of the cost was reimbursed by state and county transportation funds, Boulder was still using about $23,600 of taxpayer money to provide the service. In the meantime, state funding to educate the Elk Park students was going with the students to Butte.
Boulder’s school board decided to approach Butte school officials about the matter. A March 2007 meeting was cordial, said Klein. The idea of having Butte take over the bus service for Elk Park was discussed, he said.
“They seemed to be very receptive,” Klein said, though Butte officials cited “appreciable” obstacles. For instance, Butte’s bus drivers are part of a union, so simply contracting with Sologub was not an option.
Nevertheless, “the tone of that meeting was very positive,” he said.
Discussions went on, and Boulder school board members tried to find a solution. They learned that the home district could still meet legal requirements to the students by paying families on individual transportation contracts to take their own students to school, said Klein. The reimbursement, a per mile rate that Klein says doesn’t even really cover the cost of gas for the families, does not take into consideration how many students a family has. The payment is for the distance that must be driven.
But individual transportation contracts are entirely reimbursable by the state, so the plan would essentially cost the Boulder schools nothing, making $23,600 more available to educate the students who attend in Boulder. That’s hard to turn away from when money is sorely needed, he said.
Joe Sologub says he understands the hardship the Boulder schools face, but worries about what the decision will mean for Elk Park and the families who live there.
RURAL COMMUNITIES LOSING
There are potential hardships for Elk Park families when school begins in the fall, says Joe.
“We’ve got a couple of single moms that it’s going to be really tough on,” he says.
With kids in different schools, and involved in a variety of sports and activities, families could be spending a lot of time running back and forth to Butte, says Terri. One family, with a child with disabilities, will have kids in four different schools, she says.
And with the rising cost of gas, Elk Park families are going to find the going tough, she predicts.
“How they are going to manage it, I don’t know,” she says.
Another concern, says Joe, is safety. Older students will wind up driving on dicey roads, perhaps with younger students onboard, he predicts. Both school districts could face liability challenges if someone is hurt because the districts did not find a solution, he says.
The Sologubs say they did everything they could to try to save the bus service, and they complimented the efforts of some of the school board members. “Some of the school board members were great,” says Joe. “They tried as hard as they could.”
He is not as complimentary about the superintendents of Boulder and Butte schools, though, saying he is not impressed with their efforts.
He and Terri also lay some blame at the feet of the Elk Park families. “A lot of them thought we were going to save it,” says Terri.
“They just didn’t quite believe it was going to happen,” she says of the end of the bus service.
Joe drafted a petition that most of the area citizens signed, and he presented it to the school boards this spring. But it was too little, too late. The decision to terminate the contract with Sologub had already been made, said Klein.
“We lost a service to our community,” says Joe, who with Terri also worked hard to make sure Elk Park kept its polling place despite new federal regulations that resulted in the closure of some polling places in Jefferson County.
“Little communities seem to be getting cut out and cut out,” he says.
But Joe says he understands that Boulder faced an unfortunate choice, and considers educational funding to be the real culprit.
“It would just be nice if they’d come up with some better way of funding the schools,” he says.
WHAT’S LEFT
When the first day of school arrives in about a month, the impact of losing a school bus service after 70 years will hit home for Elk Park area families.
For Terri and Joe, the impact has already started to arrive.
The two buses – including the backup – are for sale. And someone finally officially took note of Terri’s longevity, nominating her to receive a 25-year plaque from the Montana School Bus Driver’s Association.
Terri is philosophical about the end, saying she is ready to stop being tied down by the bus route.
“But we’ll really, really miss the kids,” she says.
“It’s just a sad situation,” adds Joe.
Elk Park school bus service makes final stop after 70 years
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Copyright The Boulder Monitor, 2008. All rights reserved.
