‘L’ comes before ‘E’ except on swanky Pendleton school bus

Published 5:00 pm Friday, October 13, 2023

PENDLETON — There are no spelling bees for school buses.

Pendleton High School received a state-of-the-art activity bus from their transportation contractor, First Student Inc., but the compliment in the complementary nature became a bit dulled when there was a delay in discovering the “L” and the “E” in spelling Pendleton were switched.

The bus was delivered wrapped in graphic film, even covering the passenger windows, with the name of the Round-Up City gone awry. A routine photo was responsible for blowing the whistle on the literary error. When people saw the picture, the mistake became obvious.

“It was when we took a picture with the volleyball team on the maiden voyage,” said Matt Yoshioka, Pendleton School District director of curriculum, instruction and assessment. “One of the funniest things about it is that it slipped by so many people. I really think that because of the shock of just how exciting it was to see that bus and the logo and everything, a lot of people didn’t pay attention to (the spelling).”

The Pendleton Round-Up buckaroo riding a bucking bronc adorns the front sides of the bus.

As a whole, the bus is a flashy piece of road art, and the error was there from the start, somehow escaping initial detection.

“The designers did a mock-up, including the misspelling, and for whatever reason, it slipped by a lot of people — the bus company, district people as well,” Yoshioka said. “A handful of district administrators took a peek at it and it slipped by all of us. Nobody noticed.”

The error had been discovered by Thursday, Oct. 5, when the bus had been scheduled to transport the high school volleyball team to Baker City for a conference game, and the bus was dispatched on the highway despite the spelling error. Yoshioka said his impression was the error was noticed by very few members of the public, if any.

“Most people didn’t notice it, being impressed by the bucking horse and the big green bus,” Yoshioka said. “I think the high school posted a picture of it on social media, and that’s when we got some comments from people saying, you know, people are poking fun because it’s kind of funny that a school district bus has a misspelled word on it. But at the end of the day, it’s not going to make a difference. We’re still getting an outstanding bus for our kids to use, and mistakes will be fixed.”

Yoshioka said the bus was delivered back to First Student on Oct. 6, and the bus company will pay the cost of having corrected graphics film printed and applied over the spelling errors.

Yoshioka said the bus with the corrected graphics should be returned to the high school the week of Oct. 16.

This is a non-routine swanky activity bus that will take students and the high school’s branding all over the Northwest.

“It’s not for in-town transport,” Yoshioka said. “It’s only for activities. It’s the only bus that has air conditioning. It has custom captain’s seats and overhead and undercarriage storage. So it’s really for long distance trips for kids.”

The wheels on this bus are definitely going be turning ‘round and ‘round.

“We want to use it as much as possible,” Yoshioka said. “So on any given day, whoever has the longest distance to travel, that’s the bus we will probably use. And we want to use it not just for athletics. We want to use it for any music programs or FFA programs, whenever it’s available. It’s there for the kids to use.”