SPECIAL REPORT
opportunities, making all students of Flagler County schools feel included and not separated based on the services or equipment that we provide to those stu- dents,” he said. He added that these decisions were also based on the school bus driver shortage. “And so just looking at those opportunities and saying,
‘Okay, we’re short 10 drivers and we can’t get our kids to school on time,” he explained. “What can we do to get all of our students to school on time and going to the inclusion route for some that it was relevant? We don’t do inclusion on everything, we still offer some of the smaller inclusive styles of transport. But just looking at our opportunities and evaluating our students, looking at their IEPs and saying, ‘Hey, can we do inclusion here?’ Just being able to look at some of those inclusion oppor- tunities, we were able to take 10 buses off of the road.”
Other Big Changes to the Department Efficiency was another huge focus for the transpor-
tation department at Flagler County Schools, which included further reducing school bus routes and buses and recalculating the school bus replacement plan to reduce operating costs.
Rowls explained that the district started by looking at
its numbers. For instance, if there was 2,000 elementary school students that are eligible for school transpor- tation, staff broke down how many routes would be needed for that student population. “We completely demolished our routes, tore them
down to the bones. The only thing that we had were [bus] stops,” he explained, adding that then his depart- ment started building routes from there. “Stop by stop, route by route, trip by trip, to actually build and run field trips even, to make routes more efficient.” He added that his staff made them fit into the time pa- rameters that they needed to be successful. Rowls added that Flagler also transitioned to a three-tier bell schedule to maximize the number of buses and drivers needed. This consisted of working with each school site to get each grade level (elementary, middle, and high school) on the same tier. “Then the routing perspective was making sure that we
were able to maximize our buses,” he continued, adding that in a perfect world a bus would operate at full capaci- ty. “Our full capacity had a lot to do with comfort and not actually the capacity of the bus that it is designed for.” Now, he said, the district fits about 165 students to a bus
RELIABLE COMMUNICATIONS FOR THE SAFETY OF YOUR STUDENTS AND EMPLOYEES
E
Push-to-Talk Radios Over Cellular School-Radio Safety Features
Our Dispatch/GPS Software allows you to keep track of employees and fleets
* School-Radio is compliant with all hands-free operational laws
Critical notifications can be securely and near-instantly sent between dispatch and fleets FirstNet® devices are available for qualified accounts
Scan Me
For More Info *GPS Software optional
sales@School-Radio.com 18 School Transportation News • FEBRUARY 2023
847-671-2700
www.School-Radio.com
O
C
G
O
V
E
R
A
R
G
E
E
W
R
H
E
V
Y
O
U
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
