AUBURN, Maine — At Fairview Elementary School in Auburn, a steady stream of cars lined up in the school's "buses only" lane just before Thursday morning's first bell at 8:30.
Around 465 kids attend the school. Many should have arrived by bus that morning. Instead, Principal Celeste Beaudet and a team of her teachers greeted each student as family or friends dropped them off.
"Parents on Facebook have been offering rides," Beaudet said, smiling as she stood near the school's entrance, directing traffic.
Ever the positive leader, Beaudet said she had devised a plan that week to send the queue to multiple entryways around the building and that while there were undoubtedly more cars coming to her school than normal, the diversion created a clear roadway on Minot Avenue, when it would usually be backed up in a single-file line.
All this planning and adapting came after Maine State Police announced the licensed mechanic from Lance's Auto & Truck Repair in Monmouth, whom the Auburn School Department pays to inspect the bus fleet, handed out new inspection stickers without doing much, if any, of the work himself. Instead, police said, he let another unlicensed mechanic examine the buses.
"The licensed technician was not sure which buses he actually looked at himself but admitted that it was very few," Maine Department Of Public Safety spokeswoman Shannon Moss wrote in a statement. "As a result of that finding, the Maine State Police will be taking administrative action against the licensed technician."
As of Thursday evening, it was unclear what action police were considering.
Superintendent Connie Brown said police told her what happened after the school day ended on Tuesday. With just hours to spare until the next morning's routes, she emailed parents, saying no buses would run until Friday.
"I am angry because it inconvenienced 3,500 kids and an equal number of parents," Brown said during a Thursday interview at the Auburn bus depot. "And that it jeopardized, potentially, the safety of our students. And that's simply unacceptable to me."
Andrew Parker had just dropped his child off at Fairview Thursday morning when he spoke with NEWS CENTER Maine.
"It was the safest thing to do," he said about shelving the buses. But, he and other parents were left to pick up the slack.
"I had a meeting early on. My son's late to school, and then I have to scramble to get to work a little bit later," he said.
Parker also wondered: Why not have remote learning days to avoid all of this?
"Kids had already been dismissed without those iPads," Brown said. "And, so, it would have been really difficult to have a remote day absent that technology in the hand of every student that needed it."
Brown said she was investigating the mechanics involved, including her own. As of Thursday, she was considering action of some sort against Lance's Auto, explaining how the department had to pay for another inspection, with a promise to have her fleet road-legal by Friday morning.
Back at Fairview and two years into a pandemic, the whole bus circumstance seemed to be just one more challenge for Beaudet and her teachers to take on.
"It's a good place to be," she smiled. "I mean, we rally when we need to."