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t is a well-known fact that school buses are considered “soft” targets, vulnerable to armed adults and students bent on destruction. Mass murders have occurred inside school buildings, and school buses offer less protection for its occupants in terms of fewer options for escape. Te run, hide, fight scenario is almost non-exis- tent on a school bus if an active shooter gains access. Occupants are forced to go immediately to option three. Only the bus driver stands between the per- petrator and the innocent students, as was the case in January 2013 with Chuck Poland, less than two months after Sandy Hook. He was shot and killed while attempting to protect his students from an armed man trespassing on the bus to kidnap several students. After shooting Poland to death, he did abduct a 5-year-old boy and held him hostage for nearly a week in an underground bunker before he was rescued by the FBI. Tis is not a recent phenomenon, but it is no less disturbing. Consider the 1976 bus hijacking kidnapping of 26 children ages 5 to 14 years and their bus driver, Frank Edward Ray in Chowchilla, California. Te group was buried inside a moving van in a quarry and held for ransom. Tey escaped when Edwards and several students tunneled their way out 16 hours later. Eleven years ago in March, Joyce Gregory, a bus


driver for Stewart County Schools in Dover, Ten- nessee, died at the scene after she was shot multiple times by a 14-year-old student with a .45 caliber automatic handgun. Clinard was reportedly upset at being suspended from the bus ride for three weeks that semester and for Gregory reporting him to school administrators the day prior for using smoke- less tobacco and fighting on the bus. School districts have begun providing critical training to bus drivers to avoid getting into situa- tions where they or their students are endangered. Drivers are also being trained to initiate options when confronted by an active shooter, where before there appeared to be no options. Te training includes recognizing situations that do not ap- pear right; preventing unauthorized persons from entering the bus; de-escalation; using tactical driving maneuvers to keep active shooters off balance before subduing them and disarming them as a last resort. Te training is provided by law enforcement pro- fessionals and by companies that specialize in active shooter training. School officials are using the training classes as a


proactive way of dealing with a situation they hope never happens. “We did this because of everything that’s been in


40 School Transportation News • JANUARY 2016


the news,” said Ken Hood, superintendent of the Mountain Union Elementary District in northern California. “Te potential for a problem is higher now than 20 years ago. One big reason we trained the whole staff is because it changes your attitude. Your only other choice is to say I’m going to die and you get passive. When you’re trained in how shoot- ers think, the trainers let you know you have more choices. Te shooters are scared themselves, they are very unstable people. When you know you have power over them you are much more capable of protecting yourself and protecting the kids.” Te Mountain Union Elementary School Dis- trict is a one-school district in northern California, about an hour south of Mt. Shasta. It has 84 stu- dents enrolled in transitional kindergarten through eighth grade and 23 school employees. In addition to busing its students, the district provides transpor- tation to preschoolers. Hood included his four bus drivers in a training class that taught them negotiating and self-defense techniques that he said could save their lives and the lives of students when all other options have been exhausted. “Every time I heard about (a shooting) I thought what can we do?” Hood said. “I felt helpless. Ten I went to the bus training and learned that in the dir- est situations where you’re on a bus and someone has a gun in your face there is something you can do.” Kelly Knapp, transportation director for the Sto-


rey County School District in Virginia City, Nevada, said she put her drivers through the training because her district is in an “extremely rural” area that is a major tourist attraction. “We have unmarked roads going in and out of canyons, hills and mountains,” she said. “I was concerned about someone blocking a road and taking a bus hostage. It would be really


In the upcoming spring edition of NASRO Magazine, Kevin Quinn offers several concerns about arming school staff to respond to potential active shooters. Currently, the president of the Arizona School Resource Officers Association, Quinn says the best option for districts is to employ a properly selected and trained School Resource Officer. Learn more at www.nasro.org.


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