From rural routes to desegregation runs, the yellow school bus faces a new reality

CHICAGO (AP) — They arrived in a kaleidoscope of colors, but one won. For decades, the American school bus has maintained such a standard look that “school bus yellow” is national shorthand for their deep, glossy hue.

No act of Congress mandated the color, with its slight orange tint. Rather, a 1939 conference of transportation officials from all U.S. states (then 48) chose the shade for its visibility as one of the first safety standards. At their peak in the 1980s, the yellow buses took more than 60% of U.S. students to school.

The metal-bodied school bus got its start in rural America. Georgia car dealer Albert Luce designed it to carry cement workers, then marketed it to schools when the company turned it down.

It was impeccable timing as school districts replaced one-room neighborhood schoolhouses with larger ones much farther apart. That consolidation gave rise to the school bus.

“I don’t think you could’ve had one without the other,” says Matt Anderson, head transportation curator at the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Dearborn, Michigan, which houses Luce’s 1927 bus.

Decades later, buses helped desegregate schools, hauling Black and white children across the country’s racial divide. The controversial practice has mostly ended, and in much of the United States, schools have grown more segregated, not less.

Carl Fisher drove a metal school bus for two-thirds of its nearly 100-year history. With 66 years behind the wheel, Fisher retired in 2012 as the longest-working driver, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. His first model was a Dodge truck that his dad’s friend converted, adding benches and small stools to haul 20 children in Pleasant Hope, Missouri.

“He put windows in it and everything, really made it nice,” Fisher says.

The basics became industry standard and more safety upgrades followed, including padded seats and a flip-out stop sign.

“It’s the safest form of on-road transportation per passenger, per mile, bar none — without seat belts,” says Brad Beauchamp, who is with the electric vehicles team at Blue Bird, the yellow school bus maker Luce reputedly named after the bird his wife spotted on a fence post.

Due to driver shortages and other factors, a yellow school bus is no longeravailable to take many students to school, putting pressure on families to figure out transportation.

Jim Oppegard, who drove kids for more than two decades in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park, retired at 94 as the oldest school bus driver on record. It's rewarding work, he says.

“You’re helping the kids and helping the overall society,” he says. “You’re doing an important job.”

Part of a recurring series, “American Objects,” marking the 250th anniversary of the United States. For more American objects, click here. For more stories on the anniversary, click here.

This handout photo provided by The Henry Ford Museum shows a 1927 Blue Bird ion display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich., 2008. This is the oldest surviving school bus in America. (Rudy Ruzicska/The Henry Ford Museum via AP)

FILE - Children board buses in the center city of an unknown location to go to outlying schools on Dec. 10, 1971. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - A school bus passes a pile of milo at a grain storage facility near Canton, Kan., Nov. 10, 2015. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas court on Friday slashed a $50 million judgment to $1.5 million against Infowars founder Alex Jones over falsely calling 2012 school shooting a hoax.

The ruling does not affect a $1.4 billion judgement against Jones in Connecticut, but is a significant legal victory for Jones after he and his company, Free Speech Systems, were found liable for damages for claiming the mass shooting didn’t happen.

The unanimous opinion of by the Texas Third Court of Appeals found that Sandy Hook parents Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis did not show evidence that harassment enflamed by Jones’ hoax claims rose to a level that would allow them to exceed the state’s $750,000 cap on damages for each plaintiff.

Heslin and Lewis’s 6-year-old son Jesse Lewis was among 20 children and six educators killed in the 2012 attack in Newtown, Connecticut. The lawsuit and 2022 verdict against Jones marked the first time Jones was held financially liable for peddling lies about the massacre, claiming it was faked by the government to tighten gun laws.

Jones, who portrayed the lawsuit as an attack on his First Amendment rights, conceded during the trial that the attack was “100% real” and that he was wrong to have lied about it. But Heslin and Lewis told jurors that an apology wouldn’t suffice and called on them to make Jones pay for the years of suffering he has put them and other Sandy Hook families through.

Jones’ trial attorney Andino Reynal had said immediately after the verdict that Jones would appeal the damages amount, and predicted it would be reduced to $1.5 million.

Jones and his company have filed for bankruptcy, and those legal proceedings continue. The satirical website The Onion also moved to take over Jones' Infowars platforms and turn his bullhorn of conspiracy theories into parody sites.

FILE - Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones speaks to the media after arriving at the federal courthouse for a hearing in front of a bankruptcy judge in Houston, June 14, 2024. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)