Soon after being hired at the Missouri Central School Bus company in September, Jerry Ellis said he recognized a problem.
More than 60 school buses were down with mechanical issues, and the man in charge at the time was out sick for a month, Ellis said. The buses transport thousands of St. Louis Public School District students to and from school.
"We have a list that is called the down list," said Ellis, who is a technician at the company. "Let’s say you have 120 buses, and you have 50 to 60 buses out of service, and you have 10 mechanics. And then an African American man comes to work and he sees the problem and says, ‘Hey, you guys are not doing something right.’ So he tackles that list, and he brings that list down.
"In the midst of bringing that list down, then you’re targeted.” He said some of his white colleagues didn't like how his concerns were dismissed by supervisors. They had an effective system of communication that was helping get mechanical issues fixed, he added.
“We brought the list down to 18, that’s just by listening to what I said was going on with the buses,” Ellis said Tuesday at the NAACP offices in Fountain Park on Delmar Boulevard. “When that guy came back, it went back to the old rule.”
The old rule, according to Ellis and other mechanics who spoke out last week, includes doing the bare minimum to “Band-Aid” over glaring issues with brake systems and other mechanical issues as ordered by supervisors.
It’s common for buses to have mechanical problems — a bus breaks down every 10 minutes, he said.
The St. Louis city chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has been investigating the worker complaints since late February, when diesel mechanic Amin Mitchell contacted them about a noose — a white piece of rope with a loop on one end — that was found near his workstation.
Dozens of bus drivers at Missouri Central School Bus called off work for two days last week in support of Mitchell, but school district officials said things were mostly back to normal the rest of the week. School officials scrambled to navigate the inconvenience, calling on families to help where possible with getting kids picked up from school.
Nearly 60 routes were left uncovered in the morning and afternoon, leading the school district to cancel after-school activities on Feb. 26-27.
The noose reportedly was found the day after Mitchell said he had a disagreement with his supervisor about fixing bus brakes.
Mitchell said in order to pass inspection, his supervisor wanted him to make bare minimum fixes to bus No. 6537, which had a cracked brake piston, according to the NAACP. The pistons in brake calipers are a vital component within brake systems that are responsible for helping slow the bus down.
The civil rights group believes the noose was intentionally placed near Mitchell’s station as a threat, which would be considered a hate crime under federal law.
The NAACP said it’s planning to initiate formal complaints with local, state and federal agencies.
Discrimination allegations
According to Adolphus Pruitt, president of the St. Louis city chapter of the NAACP, 90% of children riding school buses in the city's public school district are Black. Ellis said he believes that because he is in the minority and because the school district comprises mostly Black children, his white supervisors and managers don’t care as much to ensure the buses are in excellent condition.
In addition, Black women at the company are called derogatory names at work, Pruitt said. He shared examples of unprofessional behavior by workers and supervisors — some joke around with a hose between their legs, pretending it's a penis.
The bus company said in a statement last week that it has a zero-tolerance policy for discrimination, however.
Pruitt said the problem goes back before Mitchell reached out.
“There had been any number of occasions where buses had faulty braking systems and bus wheels had locked,” Pruitt said. “In one instance, there was a bus that came in disrepair, it went to a shop and was going back out on the street. The driver asked if the bus was safe to drive, and the mechanic told him it was not.
"The supervisor disputed that, then the company had the bus pulled back in for reexamination, and it turns out the bus had any number of things wrong with its braking system.”
Pruitt said that in Mitchell’s situation, they were concerned that the bus was put back out on the street and was transporting students. The NAACP also notified the school district that it may have a faulty bus transporting kids.
Mechanical issues should be taken seriously, he said.
“Back in 2010 there was a significant bus accident in St. James, Missouri, in which it turned out to be due to distracted driving, but during further inspection, the National Transportation Safety Board discovered that that bus had faulty brake systems,” Pruitt said.
The board found the bus had leaking master cylinders, cracks in the brake pads and corroded and leaking brake lines.
The NAACP notified the chief inspector for the Missouri Highway Patrol, which is in charge of inspecting school buses, regarding the bus Mitchell complained about. The patrol promised to conduct a thorough inspection before allowing it back out on the street, he said.
“We have not had any further communication with them as of yet,” Pruitt said Tuesday.
NAACP officials on Tuesday called for public transparency by Missouri Central School Bus and said they plan to contact the Missouri Highway Patrol again to reexamine what’s going on at the company from the state level. Pruitt said they will also provide a report to the city circuit attorney’s office to check for any criminality.
“We don’t seek for parents to panic, we’re just saying that there needs to be a deeper look into what’s going on at their maintenance facility,” Pruitt said. “And there needs to be a higher standard of review as it relates to the repairs [of those] buses.”
The bus company said an independent third party has been hired to conduct an investigation.
