Susie,
I couldn't agree with you more. The bus driver should only have to concentrate on safe driving. There should be another adult on the bus to deal with behavior. Of course, that would mean higher taxes for additional salaries and we all know that is not going to happen.
Recently, my husband and I went out with two other couples that we have been friends with for years. The two women in the other couples are schoolteachers like me and their husbands were former teachers.
We were discussing how education has changed over the course of our careers and my husband told us a story about his uncle who had been a school bus driver many years ago. His uncle said that he never had any discipline problems on the bus because if a child ever did act up, instead of going back to the school and writing a referral, he simply drove to the house, knocked on the door, and told the parent(s) what the child was doing. The parent would discipline the child and it wouldn't happen again.
As he told the story, the teachers at the table just started shaking our heads. We said that would never work now. The driver would be liable for leaving the bus if any of the other children got hurt while he was at the front door talking to the parents and, in all probability, there wouldn't be a parent at home anyway. In addition, if he got lucky enough to find a parent at home, the parent would blame the bus driver and ask for five signed affidavits to "prove" that their little darling could ever do something wrong.
Sadly, all of us agreed that we wouldn't want our children to be educators in today's climate.
~Kathy