Student transporters discover increased safety and security preparedness through training with local first responders
Written by Carol Brzozowski
S
chool transportation departments nationwide are engaging in an increasing number of safety and security training exercises to help school bus drivers prepare for emergencies
that range from dealing with student and parent behav- iors to mass casualty incidents. “With growing concern over threats you see in the news, we want to do everything we can to ensure the safety of the kids and the employees,” said Adam James, transportation and fleet services director for Greenville County Schools in South Carolina. “We want to give them training so in the case they encounter a situation they will have a better chance of coming out without injury and knowing what to do in a situation.” The district transports 32,000 of its 78,000 students
across an 800-square-mile area. Active shooter training is conducted annually and bus evacuation drills is conducted with students twice a year. At the start of each year, the district provides a student management class. “You might recognize when things are off or not quite
right with a student and can intervene before something becomes not necessarily a major issue, but just any issue,” noted James. He added that although a district cannot train for every scenario, “That’s not an excuse not to do any training. The consequences of not doing anything would be more chaos than is actually necessary. “When things go bad, you don’t necessarily have
control of everything. But we do want to control what we can control and give our employees the tools to handle a situation to evacuate the bus if needed or know when to call law enforcement,” he continued, adding that trans- portation departments and school districts tend to act in a silo. “Some do better than others about including the operational departments, networking, explaining the im- portance and realizing it needs to be done no matter how inconvenient. Find ways to de-conflict.” In October, student transporters at Lincoln County Schools in Hamlin, West Virginia joined the Hamlin Volunteer Fire Department, Duval Volunteer Fire Depart- ment and Lincoln Emergency Services to create a mock bus crash to practice their responses. Peggy Stone, director of transportation for Lincoln County Schools, noted after a school bus was put on its
side, she had all her bus drivers walk the vehicle aisle. “The bus laying on the side is completely different than a bus upright,” she observed. “It was an eerie feeling for all the drivers to see the bus on its side inside and out. I made this training mandatory for all drivers unless they were on a prior scheduled school trip or a doctor’s appointment.” The district worked closely with the 911 call center and EMS professionals to execute the project. “I wanted to include them due to most of these people
haven’t been on a bus in years,” Stone said. “When I approached them, they said, we won’t have that many people available during the day. We talked about that is when most accidents would occur. They then under- stood where I was coming from. “Our EMS volunteer, so most work out of the county.
The fire departments have never rolled upon an accident with this many patients.” The mock bus crash involved school bus drivers and
students as patients. “Some of their injuries were very severe,” Stone noted. “One driver-patient was supposed to lodge himself in the seat. He did so well that the EMS had to cut two seats out to get him out.” Stone said the district also fogged a bus with theater
smoke, simulating a bus on fire with assistance from West Virginia Department of Education school bus inspectors. School bus drivers worked in teams to find students, represented by training dolls. “Every day, we see more and more school bus acci-
dents on the news,” Stone noted. “We hope and pray that never happens in Lincoln County. But if it would, we want to be prepared and aware of what could happen. This was a great learning experience for all involved. It also helped us develop relationships with EMS.” Meanwhile, Andrew Jones, director of transportation
for Liberty Public Schools District 53 in Liberty, Missouri, said training for safety and security has evolved. “Problems, issues and risks have changed in their
dynamics as they were five years, 10 years ago,” he said. “We do training with some of the modern threats out there and are prepared for those threats utilizing technol- ogies. Our school bus fleet is 100 percent equipped with a camera system that feeds into a live feed so that any given point in time, we can see what’s going on in a vehicle.”
www.stnonline.com 27
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
