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Ride of a Lifetime

Mattes retires after 25 years in student transportation

By Evan Jensen

The Estacada News, Jul 28, 2010, Updated Jul 28, 2010

Evan Jensen / Estacada News

Longtime Estacada School District Transportation Director Bill Mattes will close the doors on his 25 years in the business of getting kids to and from school as he enters retirement. Mattes has worked for the ESD for 11 years and was recently recognized for his service by the Oregon Department of Education with the Big Wheel Award.

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When Bill Mattes arrived for his first day of work in the Estacada School District 11 years ago, he was expecting to spend the day organizing his office, getting familiar with bus routes and drivers and learning the ropes as the district’s transportation supervisor. But that’s not exactly how his first day in the district turned out.

“I came into work really early, all bright and shiny, ready to go,” Mattes said. “But the first thing the dispatcher, Fern Mathews, said was, ‘Some people have called in sick and you’re going to have to drive.’ She handed me a route sheet, told me the general direction to the George area and handed me the keys to a bus.”

Mattes got his start driving school buses as a college student for the local school district in Springfield, Ore. After college, he pursued a career as a parks and recreation manager, developing programs for places such as West Linn, Mount Scott, Oregon City, Gladstone and others around the metro area. But when the economy soured and he was laid off, he returned to driving school buses to make ends meet and landed a series of management positions in the industry before moving to Estacada. It had been about seven years since he had sat behind the steering wheel of a school bus when Mathews handed him the keys.

“It turned out OK,” Mattes said. “It probably took me a little longer than the regular driver, but I liked driving a bus again. When I walked back into the office, Fern said someone from the high school called and said their bus for a field trip to Lake Oswego hadn’t arrived yet and was already 20 minutes late. So I grabbed a set of keys, jumped into another bus and picked up all these kids for their band trip.”

But this time, things didn’t go quite as smoothly as his trip to George and back. As the bus neared Interstate 205, Mattes heard some commotion coming from the back of the bus. “Something’s burning. Something’s burning,” Mattes heard several students say. He pulled over and discovered that one of the axle bearings on a wheel had gone out. The damaged part was almost red hot and could have caught fire with just a few more minutes of driving. Without missing a beat on his first day on the job as the district’s transportation supervisor, Mattes found a replacement bus within 30 minutes and delivered the students to their destination a short time later.

Mattes celebrated 11 years with the Estacada School District earlier this month and looked back on 25-plus years in the student transportation business. He will formally retire at the end of the summer after leading the district’s transportation program for more than a decade. District employees and longtime friends recognized Mattes for his years of service, but he was also the recipient of the Big Wheel Award given by the Oregon Department of Education.

“This is an award that goes to the kind of person who always goes above and beyond, and doesn’t get a lot of recognition,” ODE Director of Pupil Transportation Steve Huillet said. “We reserve this award for the kind of person who gives a lot of time to benefit student transportation and does a lot of work behind the scenes.”

In Oregon, public school bus drivers cover an estimated 67 million miles a year and transport an average of 288,000 students per day to and from school. There hasn’t been a student-bus-related fatality in more than 30 years, and that’s because of people like Mattes and well-trained drivers who make sure kids are taken to school and returned home safely.

“Bill has volunteered to help organize and teach our state bus driver training class every August,” Huillet said. “A lot of that work he’s done on his own time, and it’s a tremendous amount of work. I’ve known him for about 23 years, and he’s always been the kind of guy who can make things happen. He’s always volunteered for things to make our program work better, and I think he lives for student transportation. It’s like he bleeds yellow blood now. Once you’ve been part of pupil transportation, it just becomes part of the soul. What we do is such a huge responsibility. Bill has always taken that seriously, and I know he’s been a huge asset to the Estacada School District.”

When Mattes was hired as the transportation supervisor for the Estacada School District, he began looking for other ways he could help the district in addition to transporting students to and from school. He developed a plan to train his drivers to deliver district mail and handle mailroom responsibilities. He enlisted his drivers to sort, organize and discard items at the old Estacada Grade School and Estacada Junior High School before renovations a few years ago.

“That was a huge project,” Mattes said. “We hauled out a semitrailer full of books from the basement that went to a Books for Rwanda program. And we had to go through more than 30 years of archives and pare that down to store in the warehouse. We had a shredding company come in to take care of the rest, and we literally loaded piles of paper by the forklift into the shredding machine. We’ve been the keeper of district records ever since then, and have set up a system to store newer records and get rid of outdated records.”

Before Mattes landed in Estacada, he worked for First Student School Bus Transportation Services, formerly known as School Bus Services, in a variety of contract positions for several school districts in the state. In between his career move from recreation management to student transportation, Mattes was a truck driver and licensed insurance agent. But when the right opportunity came along, he got on board and rode the bus all the way back to his beginnings as a driver complimented by his years of professional experience.

“My philosophy of transportation has always been that the driver should be seen and not heard,” Mattes said. “We’re behind the wheels of the bus to support the community and support the kids, get them to school ready to learn and get them home safely. We’re the first ones to pick kids up in the morning before school and the last ones to drop them off. Transportation is really an important part of the educational process.”

Mattes plans to slowly roll to a stop as he approaches retirement. He plans to do some work as a transportation consultant for districts throughout the state, but he won’t have to keep such early-morning hours to make it to work before the first bus leaves. Instead, he’ll take time to read more, spend time with his eight grandchildren, take long walks and go fishing.

“We plan to stay in Estacada,” Mattes said. “I’ve really enjoyed living and working here and enjoy being involved in the community.”