SPECIAL REPORT
School Bus Drivers, ESL Students Roll Over the Language Barrier
By Shanna Thompson Zareski Communication is key to safe student
transportation. But a language barrier could be the ultimate roadblock if school bus drivers, riders and their parents don’t understand each other. According to the National Center for Edu-
cation Statistics, the number of school-age children who spoke a language other than English at home reached 10.9 million in 2008, and 21 percent of that population is between 5 to 17 years old. So what is the strategy school districts
can employ when bus drivers and stu- dents can’t communicate? “We have had
tremendous success
simply by hiring people from the local com- munity and drivers who have grown up around the same diverse population they are now driving,” said Alexandra Robinson, interim transportation director at Monte- bello Unified School District in Los Angeles County and president-elect of NAPT. Of the 4,000 bus riders transported daily
in the district, approximately 30 percent are ESL students. With 40 percent of Monte- bello’s school bus drivers fluent in Spanish, instructions during annual bus evacua- tion drills are given in both languages, said Amelia Flores, bus training coordinator at MUSD and a state-certified instructor. Day- to-day communication is feasible because most of the district’s Spanish-speaking stu- dents also speak English. In the event of a language barrier, the bus
driver contacts dispatch, and one of the three Spanish-speaking bus operations su- pervisors or the Chinese-speaking account clerk can communicate with the student or parent over the radio, Flores said. “We’ve always been able to find a way to
communicate some way or another,” she said. “Drivers have never really felt frustrated.” Robinson also noted that included
among Montebello’s ESL ridership are approximately 150 students who use American Sign Language. While some of the students read lips, school bus drivers
are also given cards demonstrating a few basic signs. “Some of our drivers have gone above and beyond and have taken sign lan- guage,” Flores added. At Guilford County (N.C.) Schools, collab-
oration between the transportation and ESL departments resulted in a booklet on every school bus that translates phrases such as “sit down,” “address,” and “phone number” into Spanish and Vietnamese, the district’s top two languages, said Mayra Hayes, ESL director for GCS. Drivers and students can also point to pictures to help facilitate basic communication. And GCS was working on a new training program for this fall so drivers can go online and practice phrases. “We have 125 languages [spoken in
our district], and our drivers requested assistance,” said Hayes on why the book- lets were developed three years ago. Ten percent of GCS students speak English as a second language, with the top five lan- guages being Spanish, French, Vietnamese, Burmese, and Arabic. Te district also has 25 interpreters who
can assist in communication between bus drivers and ESL students. Collaboration between GCS’s transportation and ESL de- partments has also taken efforts one step further with a “Homework on Wheels” pro- gram. Now in its second school year, Hayes said, the program provides tutoring to ap- proximately 175 ESL students in grades K-12. “Both of our resources coming together —
it is really unique, and it’s working,” she said. Staffed with teachers, tutors, interpreters,
and a bus driver, activity buses are driven into local neighborhoods to provide after-school homework support to approximately 175 kindergarten through 12th-grade students. During its first year, one of the ESL tutors was also a bus driver and teacher assistant – a perfect arrangement, Hayes said. “Tat would be ideal for us to continue
because it really worked,” she explained. “If we can have a certified driver who is also a [teacher’s assistant], that’s our main option.
28 School Transportation News Magazine July 2011
Tat’s what we are looking for this year.” Los Angeles Unified School District has
9,615 ESL school bus riders who speak 56 native languages, ranging from Armenian to Spanish and Korean to Swahili, said Donald Wilkes, interim director of the dis- trict’s transportation services division. Trough a district course entitled, “Ef-
fective School Bus Driver Training,” all new drivers receive instruction in multicultural awareness and communications, as well as anger management, public relations and conflict management, to help them interact with the public and parents. All student transportation materials are printed in several languages to facilitate understanding between drivers, students and parents. And interpreters are used if a misunderstanding of the safety issues or instructions on the bus occurs. “We are such a diverse district where
many different languages are spoken that we have adapted,” Wilkes said. Lee County Public Schools in Florida,
where 8 percent of the district’s students speak English as a second language, also addresses ESL during in-service training prior to the start of each school year. Te program was implemented five years ago to preclude language challenges with ESL students, said Robert K. Morgan, director of transportation services. Protocol states that school personnel translate bus rules to students on the bus ramp. In the event of a time sensitive chal-
lenge that occurs en route, Morgan said, a bus driver can contact dispatch by radio. Non-urgent incidents are forwarded to the school to be addressed. “Communication between the schools,
parents, and transportation staff is an on- going, daily occurrence; part of day-to-day operations,” he said. “It is very effective.” ■
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