Marine Corps veterans get Aurora Public Schools fleet in shape

When Brent Spahn took over as transportation director for Aurora Public Schools in 2014, the district’s fleet of buses, vans and a few hundred other vehicles was in grim shape.

Only about 70 percent of the district’s fleet was operational on any given day in his first few months at the helm, but one particular bus still sticks in Spahn’s mind.

As he walked the bus lot each morning that winter, he noticed that bus sitting out of service for close to a month. When he asked what was wrong, he was surprised it wasn’t some catastrophic problem.

It was just a bad alternator.

That’s a job any novice grease monkey with a mediocre tool set can turn around on a Saturday afternoon. But still, that yellow bus sat in the district’s lot for a month instead of being in and out of the garage and back on the road in a day.

“Our maintenance procedures were just not very good,” Spahn said.

With those kinds of struggles — as well as persistent scheduling and routing troubles — Spahn turned to a familiar place for some help.

Having spent 27 years as a logistician in the Marine Corps — including a tour running Marine Corps transportation operations in a 50,000-square-mile stretch of western Iraq — Spahn had little doubt that a few fellow veterans could help right the struggling fleet.

“It’s a whole different mission, but that’s the way Marines are,” Spahn said.

So before the start of last school year, Spahn put in a call to some of his colleagues from his time in the Marine Corps and asked for candidates to fill a transportation supervisor position and the fleet maintenance manager position.

After a series of interviews, he tapped Shawn Smith to be the maintenance manager and John Seehusen for the transportation supervisor position — both men are retired Marines like Spahn and both handled transportation duties overseas.

“I knew both of these guys have led Marines in stressful environments and they were successful,” Spahn said.

APS Chief Operating Officer Anthony Sturges said he had the same sort of confidence when he hired Spahn — who had never worked in school transportation before — to take over the transportation department in early 2014.

“If he could successfully move hundreds, if not thousands of pieces of equipment and people in the military, then certainly those are transferable skills to his current position,” Sturges said.

Only about 70 percent of the district’s fleet was operational on any given day in his first few months at the helm, but one particular bus still sticks in Spahn’s mind.

Today, Spahn, Smith and Seehusen, along with a transportation staff of close to 200 people, have helped turn the fleet around. Now, more than 90 percent of the fleet is ready to hit the road on any given day. That’s not quite the 95-percent readiness Spahn is aiming for, but it’s a far cry from those mornings just a few years ago when close to a third of the fleet sat idle.

With a few vehicles each day needing to be out of service for state inspections or routine maintenance, Spahn said they won’t ever be much more than 95 percent, but the current percentage means buses roll out safely and efficiently.

“As long as we are above 90, we are gonna make mission all day long,” he said.

For Smith and Seehusen, the transition from getting weapons systems or tanks ready for combat to getting students off to school has been smooth, though some of the differences are stark.

“From blowing things up to safely, efficiently, effectively transporting students is a little bit different,” Smith said with a laugh.

But the core of the job — making sure the fleet is in working order — is essentially the same as what Smith did during his 23 years in the military, including in Iraq.

“Maintenance is maintenance, as long as you have the right policies and procedures and you hold your people accountable,” Smith said.

For Seehusen, it’s much the same. In the Marine Corps, he worked in a transportation unit and was tasked with making sure convoys depart on time and their routes were efficient during three tours in Iraq.

At APS, he does the same thing with buses that he did with military equipment.

“It was pretty much a seamless transition,” he said.

But, there are some challenges in the civilian world that there weren’t in the Marine Corps.

For one, Smith said, in the civilian world people are prone to ask “Why?” That doesn’t happen nearly as much in the rigid and structured world of the Marine Corps, where policies and directives clearly lay out how things are done.

Smith said that can be a struggle from some veterans transitioning from military life to the civilian world.

“You are gonna have people come to you and say, ‘Why?’ A lot of people, that upsets to have to answer the why,” he said.

Spahn said he wouldn’t hesitate to hire a veteran, in part because they leave the military with a set of technical skills that are rare and tough to find. For mechanics, for example, Spahn said there are plenty of mechanics out there, but military mechanics come with some skills that others don’t.

“Can you find mechanics who have had to actually maintain equipment in Iraq or Afghanistan when it’s 115 degrees out and, by the way, you are getting shot at?” he said.

And, Spahn said, the skill set stretches beyond the technical and includes leadership and commitment that military service provides.

Still, there is a transition from military life to civilian life that employers have to be ready for when they hire someone straight from the military.

“There needs to be some tolerance or acceptance that it’s going to take a little bit of time for a veteran to change and acclimate to a civilian type environment again,” he said.