Spicewood Elementary School bus driver Paula Phillips with her bus at the Marble Falls Independent School District Transportation Office. Staff photo by Dakota Morrissiey
Paula Phillips has been driving a Marble Falls Independent School District bus for the past 17 years, and her community loves how she does it. She was voted Favorite School Bus Driver for the Marble Falls area by The Picayune Magazine readers and KBEY 103.9 FM Radio Picayune listeners in the 2025 Locals Love Us contest.
“It’s not just a job, and it never has been for me,” Phillips said when told of the win. “It makes me proud, actually, that people actually see what you do.”
Phillips has deeper-than-usual ties to her career. She was born and raised in Marble Falls and is a second-generation school bus driver for MFISD, having ridden her mother’s bus as a student. She graduated from Marble Falls High School in 1986, and all three of her children were Mustangs, too.
Her husband, Corey, also works for MFISD, as a mechanic. He fixes her bus when needed.
Phillips operates one of the three buses that takes students to Spicewood Elementary School, leaving the transportation station in Marble Falls every school day at 5:30 a.m. to make her route.
“There’s not a lot that brings to light what a bus driver does,” Phillips said. “You build a rapport with (the kids) and their parents, you encourage them. If they have a bad day, you just tell them that it is going to be better tomorrow.”
Phillips was the recipient of one of the few recognitions for school bus drivers: the Bus Driver of the Year award from the Property Casualty Alliance of Texas. She won it in the 2016-17 business year.
“I feel blessed to be doing what I’m doing, but for the public to stand up and take notice, there needs to be more people like that,” she said. “There’s a lot of people (who look at you like) ‘you’re just a bus driver’ or think that we don’t really make a difference, but we do. We’re the first one your child sees in the morning and the last one they see before they go home.”
