“Any (incident management) system has to have the ability to account for personnel, resources and activities during an event or incident.”
Mike Goldsmith, Risk Analysis & Management Inc.
£ Tyler Technologies’s Incident Management solution records and manages all acts of bullying, school building and bus vandalism, school bus accidents and student medical incidents.
AWARENESS, THEN DIAGNOSIS Linda Farbry, transportation director for
Fairfax County (Va.) Public Schools, said her department utilizes the state’s online accident and injury reporting systems but maintains its own spreadsheets. Her assistant director, Tim Parker, analyzes bus accident information and statistics for internal use. “Tere is an old saying that ‘frequency
breeds severity,’” Parker said, “so we make an effort to identify each and every crash, regardless of severity, or incident involving our buses. Our hope is to avoid the big things by addressing them when they are still small. Tis involves collecting some detail in databases that we try to monitor for patterns and then try to effect counter- measures.” Countermeasures may involve moving a
bus stop, altering a route to avoid problem areas or changing the training to include specific remedial instruction or ride-along observation. “AVL data and video footage from the bus helps us to determine what took place. We hope to incorporate the third dimension of how the bus is traveling using the accel- erometer contained in our AVL equipment,” Parker continued. “Tis would not just be to show what happened in the last few
moments prior to a crash, but could be used to diagnose erratic driving behaviors during day-to-day operations as well.” Tierney Tinnin, spokesman for Okla-
homa City Public Schools, said the district purchased Awareity’s TIPS software because it provides another tool in report- ing, addressing and intervening in incidents. Officials heard TIPS had proven successful in other Oklahoma school districts and decided to give it a try — mainly to reduce student bullying, he noted. “We are also using the software to address student behavior and complaints,” Tinnin said. “It can be used to track student, teacher or bus driver behavior. For example, if a student reports wrongdoing on the part of the teacher or a bus driver, it is tracked and notifies the employee’s direct supervisor, who can then respond and take necessary action.” Team members can quickly see all incidents for their school or district, review individual incident reports, set up automat- ed reminders for team members, escalate to the appropriate third parties, and search for and review related incidents. “TIPS is equipping schools across the na-
tion with the tools to become more aware of threats, concerns and incidents,” said Rick Shaw, founder and CEO of Awareity.
£ Gilda Muller of Language and Cultural Services at Oklahoma City Public Schools uses the TIPS platform the district recently purchased to better track and prevent bullying incidents.
40 School Transportation News January 2013
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