» YEAR IN REVIEW
THE STN EDITORS RECAP 10 OF THE MOST POLARIZING NEWS ITEMS THAT AFFECTED THE INDUSTRY DURING THE 2012-2013 SCHOOL YEAR
WHAT IT ALL
MEANS Recently, the term "seques-
BUS DRIVER STRIKES
The Chicago Teachers Union
went on strike Sept. 10, forcing a shut down of the third-larg- est school district in the na- tion. During the strike approxi- mately 350,000 students were displaced, said Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman Robyn Ziegler. The strike concluded eight days later. A few months later, 8,000 school bus drivers and atten- dants in New York City went on strike from Feb. 15 to Feb. 20. In that span, the city spent about $20.6 million in transit cards, taxis and gas mileage in an effort to get thousands of students to school, according to Chancellor Dennis Walcott. The strike was prompted to protest the elimination of em- ployee protection provisions from bus company contracts. The district also recently re- bid its school-bus contracts for the first time in 30 years.
tration," referring to the across- the-board federal spending cuts, has reverberated throughout the nation. When the sequester came to pass on March 1, it meant that federal funding would be held back, impacting the 2013-2014 budgets for school transportation and head start programs. While transportation directors are trying to manage their budgets, head start programs are trying to analyze their worth in order to compete for funding. For Head Start, only the programs that can prove their success will receive federal dollars while the rest will likely be shut down. Needless to say, it will be a tough road ahead for both transportation and head start programs unless an alternative budget gets passed.
MAJOR
TRAGEDIES On Jan. 29, well-loved Ala-
Holding the Keys Te concept of Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, is to
create and look at metrics on things like how many students per bus, etc., in order to create efficiencies by quantifying the information. NAPT is pushing for a standardized list of performance Indicators and formed KPI Task Force in 2012 to study them. Te Task Force is ready to field test all the current definitions,
said Peter Lawrence, team leader of the NAPT Task Force's Research group and director of transportation at Fairport (N.Y.) Central School District. Ultimately, NAPT would like to see the KPIs adopted in 2015 by the National Congress on School Trans- portation, or NCST, and have them form the basis of a business assessment tool for student transporters.
STN HOSTS TSD CONFERENCE When STN Media Group acquired the Transporting Students with Disabilities and
Preschoolers National Conference from Edupro Group in March 2012, it signaled a new era for the training event. STN Media, which also publishes School Transportation News, saw a year of hard work pay off in March when it traveled to Frisco, Texas, to host the widely known industry conference for the first time. While the hands-on, disabilities-specific training remained the same, with three dozen in-depth workshops and learning sessions, a new feature at this year’s 22nd annual conference was the Trade Show Preview Party that extended the experience for both vendors and attendees. STN Media also entered an agreement with NAPT to continue the Special Needs Team
Safety Roadeo. Tis year’s winners were Myra Walstead and Jesse Hill of Academy School District 20 in Colorado Springs, Colo.
36 School Transportation News July 2013 Conference and Trade Show
bama school bus driver Charles "Chuck" Poland, Jr. was shot and killed while protecting stu- dents on his bus from gunman Jimmy Lee Dykes. When Dykes trespassed on the bus demand- ing two child hostages, Poland not only refused, but positioned himself between the gunman and the 22 children on the bus. Tis allowed 21 students to escape through the buses back exit. Af- ter shooting and killing Poland, Dykes grabbed a 5-year-old boy with special needs and fled to an underground bunker. Te boy was eventually rescued days later and returned to his parents by an FBI tactical team, which shot and killed Dykes in the process. Only a couple months prior to
Poland's murder, the mass shoot- ing at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn, riveted the nation and sparked a hot debate on gun control and the right to bear arms on school grounds. Te gunman shot and killed 20 first-grade students and six adult teachers and administrators on Dec. 17. Te incident is consid- ered the second-worst school shooting in U.S. history.
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