To 'Mrs. C,' Driving Merrimack School Bus Is More Than A Job

MERRIMACK, NH — Laurette Cillo, known to most kids as 'Mrs. C,' is a pretty recognizable face in Merrimack. For the past 44 years, she has been a school bus driver for the Merrimack School District.

A career that started as a daycare solution for her four children has grown into something that's more than just a job. Throughout the years, she has seen the students grow up, and in some cases, she is now driving the grandchildren of the kids she drove to and from school decades ago.

Cillo, 66, has been employed by multiple bus companies in her time in Merrimack. Today, she works for Student Transportation of America — with which the school district currently has a contract — and as the bus company makes efforts to attract more bus drivers to the job, Cillo makes it a point that driving the kids may not be for everyone, but it is rewarding.

Cillo is just one of the bus drivers who have been attracted to the job by the fact that she was able to bring her children on the bus while she worked. Affording daycare for four children was difficult, but by bringing her kids on the bus with her, she was able to cut costs while being more involved in their lives.

Never driving with "blinders on," Cillo hears what the students talk about on the bus, even if the kids don't realize it. And if someone on the bus misbehaves, she is not the one to ignore it.

Cillo describes herself as being "fairly strict," though her only "threat," she said, is having a misbehaving student sit at the front of the bus.

"When they're trying to be the popular guy and they get put out front, it puts a little air out of their balloon," she said.

In rare, more extreme cases, she has had to turn the bus around and return to the school to solve a behavior problem.

Driving a 40-foot-long bus, Cillo watches the roads and the mirrors at all times. She can typically pick up on when a student is about to throw something or stand up when the bus is moving — things that are not allowed and can present a safety issue.

She typically gets to know the students' names early in the school year, and when it comes to the young students, she knows when a parent is supposed to be waiting for them at the bus stop, making sure a young child is not walking home alone, unless it previously had been determined that it is OK.

"My job is to get them to school safely, and home safely," she said.

Cillo has been a school bus driver longer than anyone else in Merrimack. At times, she finds herself driving grandchildren of children she used to drive decades ago. Other times, teenagers she has driven have become her new colleagues. And at one point, the brother of a kid who threw a snowball into her bus had become her boss, when she worked for a previous bus company contracted with the Merrimack School District.

Michelle Bancroft, the operations manager for Student Transportation of America's Merrimack bus terminal, said her husband used to ride with Mrs. C when he was a student. "He was a naughty nugget," Cillo recalls.

Bancroft, too, began driving the school bus because she could take her children on the bus and daycare was too expensive. Now, almost two decades later, her children are grown but she has stuck with the job.

"These kids become our children," Bancroft said about driving the Merrimack school bus. She said she does her best to ensure a consistent bus schedule, so that families don't have to change their routines, even in the midst of a school bus driver shortage that the bus company has seen in the past couple of years.

Last year, Student Transportation of America has been undergoing recruitment initiatives to attract more school bus drivers to the job. And over the summer, the bus company has been lucky enough to add eight new bus drivers who were either recently licensed or who are in training, said Pat Bailey, co-manager of the Merrimack bus terminal at Student Transportation of America. After training, and barring any problems, the company hopes to be fully staffed by October.

But Student Transportation of America is always hiring new school bus drivers.

The Merrimack school bus routes have recently been published online.