Paul Turner: The buses at ‘Camp Shiloh’ run on time with the help of 10-year-old Annabelle Howes

When the 560 students at Shiloh Hills Elementary recently relocated a few miles away to the former Northwood Middle School, it created a problem.

Annabelle Howes is part of the solution.

The freckled fifth-grader is 10 years old. “Almost 11.”

She wears purple sneakers with pink shoelaces, and she is all business when she pulls on her orange safety vest.

Annabelle is one of about 30 “bus helpers” at the Mead School District grade school.

While Shiloh is being renovated, a high percentage of the kids will be taking the bus. And Linda Stratton, a retired teacher who fills multiple roles at “Camp Shiloh ” – as they refer to their temporary home next to the new Northwood school – had an idea. She thought they ought to get the pupils involved in making the bus transition work.

School principal Laura Ketcham-Duchow sings the high-energy 69-year-old’s praises.

“When she proposes something, we just say ‘Yes.’ ”

But Stratton mostly wanted to talk about the children. One of those kids is blond, blue-eyed Annabelle, who said she doesn’t go by a nickname.

“I like helping the kindergarten kids find their bus,” she said, before breaking off her answer to fix her laser-like attention on a couple of sprinting “kindies,” as they are sometimes called at Camp Shiloh.

“Walking!”

The kindies immediately downshifted.

But being a bus helper isn’t just about raising your voice. “Discipline is not their job,” Stratton said.

Their real job is to do what needs to be done to help the staff shepherd the children from the school to the right bus.

Sometimes that means scurrying back inside with a child who forgot her backpack. Sometimes it means holding the hand of a bus rider who is struggling with anxiety or needing assistance finding a shoe.

And sometimes, like on Tuesday afternoon, it can mean soothingly massaging the shoulder of a kindie who just didn’t seem to think she was cut out for this whole going-to-school routine.

Watching her line of kindergartners like a mother duck, Annabelle escorted them out to where they would wait for their bus.

Without being relentlessly loud, the assembled children still gave off enough energy to overload a power plant.

It had been suggested the best bus helpers aren’t always perfectly behaved toe-the-line kids. But Annabelle was not interested in being portrayed as a reformed bad girl.

“I work hard. I make sure I get my stuff done.”

Next question.

Annabelle is training a sixth-grade boy who towers over her to be a bus helper.

I asked that lad, Levi Green, what was the key to being good at the job.

“Having siblings,” he said. “And patience. Lots of patience.”

So focused and attentive that she conjured images of a strawberry shortcake Marine sergeant, it was easy to watch Annabelle and sort of forget that she was a child. But then, out of nowhere under Tuesday’s sunny sky, she started doing a little dance. Grooving in her culottes-length pants to a beat only she could hear.

That lasted all of five seconds.

A yellow bus, Mead School District No. 354, had pulled up.

“Yea!” cried Annabelle.

Yep. She’s a kid. She would be going home, too.

“Hey guys, get up,” she called to her young charges. “Up! Up! Up!”

But the kids’ requirement for attention did not let up as the kindergartners and others waited to board.

One little girl needed a ribbon in her hair fixed. A little boy wanted to know what day it was or something on that order.

And another kid had a question that Annabelle realized was above her pay grade.

“Ask Mrs. Stratton,” she answered.

It takes a lot of people and a fair amount of coordination to get all those kids on the correct buses.

Annabelle’s just one of the cogs.

But she makes me think Mrs. Stratton was right when she emailed me after a recent column in which I praised baby boomer safety patrol kids of my particular vintage. There are plenty of outstanding children to be seen in 2018, she said.

“Responsible, trustworthy, hard workers with outstanding character,” she wrote.

I know. I saw it Tuesday afternoon.

If I was a little kid and Annabelle Howes asked me to do something, I would do it.