Amelon bus driver goes extra mile to help students

The Amelon Elementary School fifth-grader announced that, despite the complexities of the Articles of Confederation even to some adults, that she was ready for her history quiz.

“To me, they are a little deep for elementary children,” said the student’s teacher, Janet Madison. “And she said, ‘Oh, I’m ready, my bus driver helped me study.’”

What?

“She said, ‘Well, he talks to us,’” Madison recalled.

Preston Lewis, a three-year bus driver, glides No. 84 into Amelon’s front drive a bit early for the students’ scheduled 8:40 a.m. walk from the bus into the school.

He uses the time to talk with the students.

“I just like to know where they are,” said Lewis, 62. “I hear them discussing it, and I discuss it with them to reinforce what they learn.”

He’s also helped the students with multiplication, subtraction and addition and with presidents, the Civil War and the galaxies.

“Just to perk their interest, to let them know there’s so much to be learned out here,” said Lewis, soft-spoken and smiling softly. “Just to let them know, you should always be reaching.”

“This is what we’re about,” said the superintendent, Brian Ratliff, after Madison emailed him to say how proud she was of Lewis and other staff Amherst County Public Schools staff members.

Bus drivers are the first school personnel the children see each day and the last when they arrive home, and educators train drivers to make the bus an extension of the classroom.

“We just want to make sure that we’re doing our part to make a positive change in Amherst students’ lives, and that starts with us every day,” said the transportation director, Kelly Holmes, formerly the principal at Temperance and Pleasant View elementary schools.

“We have a lot of drivers who take that to heart, and go out of their way to make sure students are OK, like teachers.”

Amherst County Public Schools has 61 full bus routes, and also use five or six vehicles to take students to Lynchburg regional schools, Holmes said.