Legislator seeks state review after one school bus driver falls asleep, another charged with DUI

One Washington County school bus driver fell asleep at the wheel on Tuesday, leading to a mishap that sent several children to a hospital with minor injuries. On Wednesday, another Washington County school bus driver was arrested for DUI. On Friday, the county school superintendent, Kimber Halliburton, announced she had fired the system’s transportation director.

Now, state Rep. Matthew Hill (R-Jonesborough) has asked the state Department of Education to review the school system’s safety procedures, reports WJHL TV.

“(W)e have two within less, less than 24 hours of each other, we’ve got some, there’s obviously some systemic problems, either with the hiring process or we are obviously finding out now that some folks in leadership, potentially high up leadership, is not following the law, and is not following the safety procedures with drug testing, drug screening, and we don’t even know what is going on with background checks, we’ve got to check in with that as well,” Hill said.

…Saturday night when we spoke to Rep. Hill, he referred to Halliburton in our interview saying, “I also think it’s very obvious that our superintendent has some very tough questions that she’s going to have to answer sooner rather than later.”

…”The department of education is the state agency that’s in charge and responsible with overseeing the safety procedures, and so I’ve formally invited them to come to Washington County and I believe they will be doing that here soon to take a closer look at our safety procedures,” Hill said.