'I deeply regret what happened': Now-famous former Amherst school bus driver opens up

AMHERST — For two years Jackie Miller had been driving that bus, carting kids of all ages across town to school and back. The mornings weren't so bad. "They were still in a coma, you know," she said with a little bit of a laugh. "But the afternoons — that was a different story. And then that core group would get on…." And then came Wednesday. Wednesday was it. Something just aligned differently that day. It wasn't the high schoolers, oh no. It was a small group of junior high students who plucked that last nerve like a pawn shop guitar. Miller said there was a ringleader, one student "that would rile the rest of them up every single day," who had started yelling at the top of his lungs that day that another student was spraying perfume — something they had been repeatedly warned not to do, as it would trigger her asthma. "He'd get them all riled up, get them wound up like cheap watches. The disrespect. The way these kids were on the bus, just a nightmare. There was nothing I could do that could get them to stop doing this," she said. "That was the day I reached my breaking point. I just couldn't do it any more." What Miller did do has now been viewed more than 3 million times on TikTok: She left the driver's seat and headed down the center aisle, unleashing a torrent of profanities on the 13- and 14-year-old students. "I'm sick of you, I'm sick of all of this s---. I'm going to start kicking some f------ serious a--. Do you hear me?" Miller said. A student caught Miller's tirade on video and posted it on TikTok, where it immediately went viral. It caught the attention of Amherst Schools Superintendent Mike Molnar, who released a statement and sent home a letter to parents, letting them know the district found out like they did, via social media. Miller resigned after speaking to Molnar Wednesday evening. "I heard what he wasn't saying," she said. "He said he was going to put me on paid administrative leave Thursday and Friday, and then of course this week was holiday leave. And I thought 'this guy is going to hang me out to dry. I don't need this in my life.' So five minutes later I told him I resign.'" Molnar said any violations of conduct that students may have made during the incident were addressed with parents after school officials reviewed the video from bus, though he declined to offer any further details. He said Saturday that in his eight months with the district he was unaware of any previous complaints about Miller. The video also caught the attention of others, including business owner Jacqui Adkins, proprietor of Mistakes on the Lake in Vermilion. Adkins was getting her hair done when someone showed her the video of Miller's bad day, which resonated with Adkins, who has parented teens. While still in the beautician's chair, Adkins drew up a T-shirt design with a slogan of one of Miller's one-liners, inscribed over a school bus: "My foot's gonna be so far up your a--it's going to dangle from your nose." Orders started coming in before her appointment was over. She knew she was onto something. "I've got to find this lady," she thought. "And of course, the internet is an amazing thing and found her for me." The unlikely second act for Miller started there. The shirt posted Thursday; 910 had been ordered by Saturday, with $5 from each sale going to Miller. Adkins is fielding orders from around the country and has passed along requests for interviews to Miller that so far has included two Cleveland television stations, a newspaper, a radio station and Inside Edition next week. A GoFundMe to fund a retirement and vacation fund for Miller had raised more than $27,000 by Saturday. "She's just this sweet woman, when we first met she said 'I'm so embarrassed. This isn't something I want to be remembered by in my career. I don't understand why people are on my side. It's shouldn't have gotten that far. I'm sorry for how it happened, but I'm done,'" Adkins said. "I'm just this normal person," Miller said. "Hindsight is, you know, perfectly clear and honestly I would have taken a moment to take a bleeding breath and just calmed myself down and just gone back there and find out what's really going on and I would not have blown up. OK, I just wouldn't have done it." Miller said she might return to driving a bus again but probably not with kids. She may go back to what she used to do, driving developmentally disabled adults, or even senior citizens next time. She used to be an over-the-road truck driver with her husband for years before moving to Ohio to be near her grandchildren. The mother of three adult children, she lost one daughter to cancer in 2007. She and her daughter were fighting cancer at the same time — "that was a hard row to hoe," she said — and her daughter was the one who taught her to slow down and pay attention to what people have to say, a lesson she still uses when dealing with students. "Just shut up and listen. You always learn something, she would say. I would always keep the seat near me open for kids to come and talk to me if they needed to talk," Miller said. Freshman Isabella Volpe has been riding Miller's bus for two years said while she was surprised by the turn of events, she wasn't entirely shocked. While Isabella had gotten a ride home with her mom on Wednesday and wasn't on the bus, when she saw the video she said "That just did not seem like Miss Miller." But the kids acting up? That's a daily occurrence, she said. On Saturday Isabella called Miller to see how she was doing. "I told her I will miss her. It was so nice seeing her every morning and afternoon. I was having a rough time once and she was concerned about me, she would say 'You don't have to talk to me about me but I'm here if you need somebody.' The next day she brought me a stuffed animal. It was a little unicorn. A lot of times I would see kids sitting up by her, talking to her when I got on the bus," Volpe said. "I'm definitely going to miss her." "I deeply regret what happened. I do to the bottom of my heart, but I don't take it back either," Miller said. "This was a powder keg and I was the match. The whole thing exploded. I'm a nobody. I just drive a bus. Everybody is just tired of this kind of behavior going on." Rini Jeffers can be reached at rinijeffers@gmail.com.