FIRST TAKE 2017: The Year of Resiliency WRITTEN BY RYAN GRAY |
RYAN@STNONLINE.COM I
f there ever was a year to break the mold, 2016 was it. For a variety of reasons, much of society—and this
industry—is glad to see out with the old and in with the new. Some of us hope things will be better, others
figure things can’t get any worse and plenty feel anxious, petrified even, over the unknown. Society in general feels less secure. Whether those threats are real or perceived, the result is fear and a desire to give up. In the school bus world, an improving economy
doesn’t necessarily translate into boom times. Yet, over the past year, we heard far fewer concerns about budgets and making ends meet. No, those were replaced by driver shortages. And there is plenty of fear about that, but also optimism. Security is our traditional focus in this month’s issue, in terms of managing student behavior in the school bus and mitigating criminal threats from the outside. Student transporters continue to play a vital role in planning, training and collaborating for the worst-case scenario. Tat was the focus of an all-day event NAPT produced with the Transportation Security Administra- tion in November. But security also means the health of the industry, especially in a year when more districts and contractors were negatively affected by the driver shortage. Truth be told, not having enough qualified drivers to start a school year is nothing new for the industry, but in 2016, the issue seemed to come to a head. A speaker at a state conference last summer estimated that, at the current rate of attrition, the industry faces an employment vacuum in 10 years of an estimated 300,000 school bus positions lost over that period. Tat’s scary stuff. For some, the most obvious solution to a lack of drivers is to pay them a more competitive, living wage. In theory, yes. But the reality for many school districts is that despite the improved economy, they still don’t have the budgets to pay drivers more, especially amid increasing costs to train and certify new applicants, many of whom might not last a month much less an entire school year. And therein lies the rub. Pay drivers more or risk los- ing them to a trucking company, the local transit agency or a delivery service that is more capable of paying high- er wages and guaranteeing a 40-hour work week. You’ve heard this before? Meanwhile, everything in society is becoming auto-
12 School Transportation News • JANUARY 2017
mated, so why not the school bus? Te technology is quickly evolving for our passenger cars, and medium- and heavy-duty truck manufacturers have taken notice. In a perfect autonomous-vehicle-driven world, there is no need for drivers, one might argue, and no need to worry about who is responsible for managing student behavior, ensuring they wear their lap-shoulder seatbelts. Plus, watching for illegally passing motorists at bus stops and in number of other duties not expected of your run- of-the-mill commercial driver. Problem solved, right? Te problem is precisely that: School busing requires
more than just holding both hands on the wheel and teaching your foot the difference between the brake pedal and the accelerator. Certainly, there are some bad apples out there, as the recent tragedies in Chattanooga and Baltimore show. But more often than not, school bus drivers are deeply passionate about their careers, mind you, not just their jobs of providing educational access to some 25 million children. And as Chattanooga and Baltimore showed us, any warm body behind the wheel doesn’t cut it. We are an industry of people who go out and purchase boxes of winter hats and gloves to ensure all students remain warm while they wait for the bus. Tey stock their bus with energy bars despite the ban on food to make sure all kids have something to eat before school, or on their way home, even staying late to scrub bus clean and remove any remnants. Te industry demands so much more of its drivers,
of itself, that it will right itself from under the intense pressure of local and national media not to mention par- ents and local school boards as they demand answers to something that’s not altogether broken. Even as the fed- eral government readies itself to enforce new entry-level driver training rules, as legislators in Washington, D.C. take up a bill to require and to fund lap-shoulder belts for all new school buses, the can-do attitude of student transportation remains alive and kicking. Fear won’t keep it down. And if this all means that many operations will continue to be short drivers, so be it. It’s not worth it to put just anyone behind the wheel of a school bus. Only the strong survive. ●
Ryan Gray, Editior-in-Chief
CELEBRATING 25 YEARS
First
Take.indd 12
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