delivering students safely to and from school. Have we recognized that child who needs special treatment, who’s acting depressed, who’s on the verge of tears? If we haven’t, then we’re not really here for the children. While most student transporters really do care for children, now is the time to be vocal about the great and caring things we do each school day. Transportation departments are only in the safety business, but student transportation departments are in the student safety and education business. We must assure safety, but we have to go beyond. We have to do what’s right for kids.
PRESERVING MONEY FOR THE CLASSROOM We are the transportation segment of a student education
business. Make no mistake: IT’S ABOUT EDUCATION. If most of the education occurs in school, what have you done to pre- serve funding for the classroom? Every penny you’ve spent that you didn’t have to is recognized. It’s money that could have been spent in the classroom. You may be forced to stay within your budget, but are there other ways you could be saving money? Our customers often complain about our inefficient use of re-
sources. Tey see empty buses or near empty buses and wonder why we can’t do better. In response, we try to explain we just bus the students “they give us.” Tat’s not good enough. It’s time for us to engage in the educational process and help redraw or enforce at- tendance boundaries. We have to explore alternative methods of
service if they offer comparable safety but more efficiency. We must consider different ways of doing business in order to save money. So many transportation departments are afraid they won’t be
in complete control of every aspect of all students’ transporta- tion, so they won’t explore other options. Tey won’t even think about sharing service with a neighboring district or consider using an alternative vehicle. Tat money is wasted and, worse yet, it is perceived by educators as wasted. Tey really don’t care that we’re “living within our budget.” Tey care that we’re sending big buses and expensive bus drivers to serve very few students. When there are only a few students assigned to a teacher’s class, educators merge classes or reassign students. When we are faced with the equivalent circumstances we often don’t want to have to eliminate a route or coordinate with another district so we continue to run things inefficiently. We might save a driver’s job with that strategy but we risk losing all of our drivers’ jobs. Educators have to know we’re doing everything we can to preserve funding for education. When we mention school buses, we always speak of safety, con-
venience, and helping the environment. It’s time to modify our perspective and procedures so we can honestly talk to our commu- nities about how we efficiently support children and education. ■
Meslin is the transportation director at Newport-Mesa Unified School District in Southern California and the 2010 STN EXPO chair.
Famtec Inc. THE LEADER
Digital Surveillance Implementations in SCHOOL BUS
Nationwide Installation, Sales & Service
2-Day
VCR repair on all makes
and models!
www.famtec1.com 1-888-832-6832 247 Security, Inc. National Distributor
www.stnonline.com 53
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60