The Fort Bend Independent School District has hired a replacement for transportation director Richard Torres, who resigned amid controversy in June of last year.
Transportation department employee James Hoss has been serving as interim director since Torres resigned.
The post has been filled by David Davis, former director of YRC Worldwide, who has worked for more than 25 years in the industry.
Torres faced about five grievances filed against him by Fort Bend ISD employees, according to information from the Fort Bend Employee Federation, which represented the employees who filed those actions.
One grievance, which was denied in a so-called “Level IV” hearing before the FBISD Board of Trustees, involved a bus driver named Jack Richardson who was assaulted by a former transportation supervisor. Richardson has been suspended from his job twice since pressing charges against the former supervisor, Dann Long, in court, and in his grievance he accused Torres of retaliating against him for reporting the Long incident.
Richardson was fired from the district in December of last year, and told FortBendNow that the district had been compiling complaints against him since the day he refused to drop the assault case
Torres’ transportation department also had been the subject of controversy beginning in 2008.
In April 2008, bus drivers complained they were so understaffed that mechanics were being used to drive buses instead of repairing them.
Last year, bus drivers complained to FortBendNow that a transportation supervisor’s employees were being paid to make campaign buttons for their boss’s upcoming race for secretary of the Texas Association for Pupil Transportation.
