Kristi Mullen addresses the school board during a Sept. 14 workshop on music played on school bus radios. - Photo: Carnell Hawthorne Jr.

The Suwannee County School Board has proposed new guidelines to deal with what kinds of music can be heard on school bus radios.

However, it wasn’t enough to appease one local mother, who wants radios removed from the buses altogether.

School officials call use of AM/FM radios on buses “an effective tool to help promote good student conduct,” according to a draft of the proposed policy.

However, there are limits.

“Every reasonable effort should be made to avoid playing radio stations whose broadcast includes profanity or sexually explicit music,” the draft continues. “If a song or commentary on a radio station that is playing begins to broadcast profanity or sexually explicit music, the bus driver should make every reasonable effort under the circumstances to change the radio station to an acceptable station.”

The issue came to a head at an Aug. 24 school board meeting when local mother Kristi Mullen said she was angry that her two sons, ages 10 and 7, had been exposed to “foul-mouthed, sexually explicit music” by way of the radio on their school bus. She said it wasn’t the first time, and had appealed to Superintendent Jerry Scarborough in April.

At the Aug. 24 meeting Mullen asked if music radios could be turned off or removed from buses altogether. At the time, there was no districtwide policy regarding the matter.

School Board Chairman Jerry Taylor said Thursday that the school district “is going to make every possible effort to ensure that inappropriate language does not get broadcast on school busses as far as AM/FM radios are concerned.”

Mullen, however, questioned the validity of the proposed policy.

“I do not understand the reasoning behind the guidelines that were put into place,” Mullen said by email. “Common sense alone should tell them that there is no possible way to put guidelines on AM/FM radio. There is no way to know what is coming up next.”

The Rant & Rave section of the Suwannee Democrat was flooded with responses to initial reports on the controversy. All submissions were in opposition to Mullen. Some said that the music on the buses calms kids, while others said Mullen should drive her children to school herself.

The proposed guidelines also dictate that volume on radios be set at a level that “does not interfere with student communication, two-way radio communication, or the school bus camera recording” and that students should not be “subject to radio stations that promote religion or whose content contains obscene vulgarity or commentary.”

The proposed policy also provides for disciplinary action against the bus driver if the guidelines are not followed.