When you notice a car with Cazares Driving School lettered on its side, you tend to give the student drivers plenty of leeway. But the students, who range in age from 15-72 years old, are learning driving skills from a corps of skilled instructors.
Jose Luis Cazares had retired from careers as an Army master sergeant and a teacher before he opened the Cazares Defensive Driving School in 2000. The next year, he asked his daughter Aida Martinez, a teacher, to develop a curriculum for teen and adult driver education, which he saw was a promising market. Martinez, who has a master’s degree in educational administration, was well suited for the challenge. In 2005, Cazares turned Cazares Driving School over to Martinez, who is now the full-time director of the school.
“The course we offer teens is very involved. It has 32 hours of classroom work, and we drive with them for seven hours,” Martinez said. Cazares’ fully insured cars have passenger side brakes and an extra mirror on the instructor’s side. “The best thing is for us to introduce a skill and then the students go practice those skills with a parent. The lessons become progressively more difficult, from signaling and turning to parallel parking and dealing with pedestrians to expressway driving,” said Martinez. “The point is to get out there.”
The teens must complete 30 logged hours of practice driving with a parent or designated substitute, have their completion certificate from Cazares, for example, and hold their permit for six months before they can take the driver’s license exams.
Ever the educator, Martinez established an approved driving instructor training program at Cazares. Her graduates all get a full license, which means certified to be both classroom instructors and in-car instructors after completing the 145-hour course. The school’s 25 instructors include numerous educators, retired police officers and retired military, and a former city judge, along with Martinez’s husband Larry (who handles the financial side of the family business), the couple’s 22 year-old daughter, and founder Cazares.
Martinez thrives on being in an environment where new classes begin every 16 days instead of being tied to the public school’s nine-month calendar. “Every 16 days we have the opportunity to improve. We can try new things right way and make changes, creating programs to improve delivery of instruction as well as cover new laws and changes.”
The legislature seems to pass a law every two years that affects driving schools, Martinez observed. New requirements tend to boost Cazares’ enrollment numbers. A 2010 law requires persons ages 18-24 to complete a six-hour driving course before getting a license. “We test them on site for road rules and road signs. Then they take the certificate to DPS and either get a permit or take the test,” Martinez said.
Adults wanting to drive come in with different experiences. A group of widows showed up once to take the Cazares driving course, Martinez recalled. Their late husbands had driven them everywhere, and the women decided they needed to be able to drive themselves. “In the first lesson with older students, we assess them and take it from there. I’ve had high school students taking the course, and, before you know it, their mom is in here learning to drive.”
Cazares Driving School has grown to four busy locations. Most of the courses are held after the work or school days and on weekends. Summers are particularly busy.
To read more on this story by Eileen Mattei, pick up a copy of the May 2014 edition of Valley Business Report or click on this site’s “Current & Past Issues” tab.