HEADLINES
Bus Evacuation Drills Help Transporters Know Their Student Ridership
By Sylvia Arroyo When Special Needs Transportation Consultant Cheryl Wolf
visited an Indiana school district in August to provide training on emergency bus evacuation drills, she heard the sound of crickets in response. “Tey didn’t want to sit down and think about the population
on the bus,” said Wolf, whose 30 years in student transportation includes serving as transportation supervisor at Lafayette (Ind.) School Corporation. “You could see the look on their faces that they didn’t want to go any further.” Surprisingly, there are still school districts that don’t practice
emergency bus evacuation drills. Charley Kennington is director of Houston-based Innovative Transportation Solutions, which offers customized training for school districts. He said one com- mon hurdle he sees is how some districts approach, or don’t approach, the planning phase. “Too many times people get into the thought of ‘this isn’t go-
ing to happen to me’,” he said. “But you just have to work through the process because in the event of an emergency, there is no time to plan at that moment.” Te planning phase generally begins by thinking of the “indi-
vidual” — first the bus driver, then the monitor, and then each individual on a particular school bus route. Next comes thinking about how the bus driver would help a student get off the bus during an emergency. Last is thinking about the physical capabili- ties of each student passenger so she can help herself exit the bus as quickly and safely as possible, freeing the driver and/or monitor to help others. “Ten you have to back out and look at it from a bigger pic-
ture,” Kennington said. “Look at all of the students on a bus and find out how one can help the other.” Tis thought process is then applied to each school bus with a different route. If the ridership on a route changes for any reason at
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