easy for someone to come in here and take a bus or destroy a bus and exit a different way off the mountain.”
Knapp also said that because the area is a major
Wild West tourist attraction — Virginia City, a boomtown of the 1859 Comstock Lode — to this day it can be difficult to tell the good guys from the bad. “We have a lot of people in town milling around. We’re so rural that really anything can hap- pen. We’re trying to be proactive.” Knapp said the drivers went through drills such as hostage awareness, disarming a trespasser of a weapon and active shooter drills. “It was definitely informative.” Te New Caney ISD just north of Houston, transports about 8,000 students a day using more than 100 bus drivers. Officials there also opted for the active shooter training before anything hap- pened. “(We) wanted to be proactive and equip our drivers with the necessary tools and training to be the best they can at the great job they do each and every day while keeping our kids safe,” said Josh Rice, the district’s director of transportation. “When you conduct training and practice scenarios, you’re more likely to use your training and take charge should it become necessary to use. In today’s chang- ing world, I don’t think you can “over-train” your staff to be ready for any situation.” Ruben Parra, transportation assistant supervisor
for Montgomery County Schools in Salinas, Cali- fornia, said gang activity was the reason his district hosted a classroom training session in October for about 125 special needs drivers. He said some of the neighborhoods are wracked by gang violence. “We want to protect the drivers. You never know what they will encounter,” Parra said. “We provide door-to-door service and we’ve had a situation where a driver turned down a one-way street in a neighborhood and a shooting occurred right in front of the driver.” Parra said other drivers have reported seeing muzzle flashes from passing cars. “Our drivers are required to have 10 hours of training a year so we decided to do something with safety,” Parra said. “Tis was only a half day in the classroom and we got a lot of positive feedback.”
Trainers Most companies and associations that provide
active shooter and de-escalation training agree that the best method is prevention. Bob Rettmann, the director of research and communication for the Crisis Prevention Institute, said shooters grab the headlines but those instances
42 School Transportation News • JANUARY 2016
are rare. “Te training we teach is intervening before it escalates,” Rettmann said. “Shooters are on a very rare scale. We teach day to day skills for staff on what to do when peoples’ behavior changes. We can provide support to de-escalate that behavior or take the approach that the behavior is not going to be that productive for them.” Jeff May, president of APEX-SCF, uses a hands-
on approach to training that actively involves the bus driver in training exercises that require them to react to situations enacted by the trainers during live drills. Tese include dealing with an irate parent at a bus stop and reacting to the sound of gunfire from the back of the bus and using tactical driving ma- neuvers to help subdue the shooter. May said watch- ing a demonstration is not the same as participating. He echoed the opinion of other trainers by saying that if bus drivers practice the techniques enough, they will perform them in pressure situations with- out hesitation.
Companies like ApexSCF have seen an increase in the number of school districts, including transportation departments, interested in training employees on not only de-escalating situations but responding with their own force, when necessary.
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