The School Newspaper of Cherry Hill High School East

Eastside

The School Newspaper of Cherry Hill High School East

Eastside

The School Newspaper of Cherry Hill High School East

Eastside

Bus driver deliberately late on testing days

Cherry Hill bus driver Cynthia Swift, 47, was charged with two counts of reckless endangerment of grade point averages yesterday morning. A jury sentenced her to 1 year of administering East math contests, alone.

Swift plead not guilty to purposely arriving late to every stop on her 15-minute route whenever student Richard King had a Calculus AP test.

“I was 23 seconds late to his stop the other day, or so this loony tells me,” she said, referring to King. “When he stepped onto the bus, he slapped me right across the face. Then he handed me a stopwatch and told me to start practicing on weekends.”

King claims, however, that East’s ambiance fueled his passionate response to Swift’s tardiness. “I have a 94 in Calc now because I got an 89 on that test: and that’s just not good enough. I dreamt last night of cougars, everywhere, scratching unit circles into my arms and I still can’t find theta!”

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At this point in Swift’s trial, a court-appointed physician administered a sedative to King.

Later, King recounted the initiation of his mathematical woes. “Well, at first I thought ‘maybe she’s just sleepy today,’ or, ‘maybe there was a mother hen crossing the road,’” King said. “But I suspected something else when she started closing the doors on me.”

Swift, however, said she used the mechanical doors out of fear that King, who “always stood in perfect posture by the curb holding his textbook… stroking it,” would berate her driving skills by analyzing her bus route mathematically.

Wheezing from the pneumonia he contracted from waiting for the bus outside on December 15, the day of his Calculus AP unit test, King recalled a particular incident in greater detail, for which Swift was arraigned.

“I saw a speck of yellow from around the corner while I was just skimming the basic integration formulas. I got so startled she had arrived almost on-time that I flung my book a few feet in front of me. Then… I saw my bus driver jerk the wheel and jump the curb. She wanted my book, and she destroyed it.”

“That part is true, actually,” Swift said while on the stand.

East principal Ron O’Schmeeza said, “The word… ‘calculus’… contains the word ‘us.’ I think it is imperative that we… work as a team… a community… to ensure that the East community keeps the ‘us’… in calculus. Thank you.”

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