Curtis Jenkins

The story of Curtis Jenkins, who spent years transforming the lives of the students who rode his Texas school bus, before he was promoted to serve as a “Relationship Specialist” mentoring staff across Richardson Independent School District in northern Dallas County, Texas, is not a new one. However, the story continues to make the rounds because Jenkins’ example is so inspiring.

At the close of 2019, a CBS News correspondent noted that his May story about Jenkins was the one most shared by viewers that year. In late 2024, Jenkins had the opportunity to chime in before the cameras, narrating much of a short video titled “Creating Community on a School Bus.”

Jenkins himself had rocky experiences as a schoolkid, on one occasion being robbed at gunpoint while walking to school (he had ten cents on his person), and later encountering violence, mean behavior, and chaos when he rode the school bus to high school.

He recounts how two people who “saw things in him that [he] didn’t see in himself”—his mother and his white high school principal (Jenkins is African American)—encouraged him to expand his own horizons and, consequently, those of the people around him. When the principal invited Jenkins to drive a school bus instead of a truck and “make it his classroom,” Jenkins rose to the challenge.

Jenkins noticed the same patterns on the school bus that he had experienced as a young person, so he established a basic ground rule: “We all care about everybody on this bus and outside this bus.” He also let the students know that they could “be better than the conditions in which [they] live.” Going above and beyond, Jenkins evolved a culture where he and the students would share everything from songs to calisthenics to “motivational meetings.”

Convinced that “communities need leaders—and we all are leaders,” Jenkins also intently studied the personality of each student and assigned them tailored leadership roles such as nurse, policeman, judge, banker, and president. Reflecting on this, he states,

“When I started driving the bus I saw an opportunity to take kids and turn them into better citizens for the future…. You’ve got to learn what certain things are, and kids don’t know…. What’s integrity? What’s morals? What’s value? What’s your plan in life?”

During his bus-driving years, Jenkins and his wife regularly dedicated a significant portion of their paychecks to buying personalized Christmas and other gifts for the students (ranging from school supplies to bicycles), but he emphasizes,

“You don’t need money to be kind. You don’t need money to love. You don’t need money to be mindful and to care about somebody.”

After the district superintendent promoted Jenkins, giving him responsibility “for changing the culture for all 39,000 students in the district,” Jenkins’ passion for making change helped launch at least a dozen different programs. Jenkins told a local news station in 2020, “I can go out and teach what I have inside of me to the whole district.” As we often like to remind our audience, one person really can make a difference.