P
ut yourself in the following situation situation. The school bus you’re driving down the road starts to fill with smoke. You are transporting eight children with
special needs, and there is an attendant on board. You all need to evacuate, and now. What does your emergency evacuation plan dic-
tate on when and where to pull over the bus? How should you and the attendant begin evacuating students in child safety restraint systems? A wheel- chair? How does the outside temperature affect the evacuation? Attendees at the 2022 Transporting Students with
Disabilities and Special Needs (TSD) Conference in Frisco, Texas, in November got a greater under- standing of what goes into planning for emergency evacuations, especially for students with special needs. In addition to various sessions focused on the topic, several dozen attendees signed up for the special training and participated in a hands-on experience that included a school bus filled with theater smoke, a fire extinguisher station, and belt cutting.
The school bus evacuation training was an all-day
event held at Prosper Independent School District. The training started with classroom instruction on how to properly and safely plan for evacuating stu- dents with special needs and preschoolers during an emergency. The class focused on objectives such as knowing the student’s abilities prior to getting them off the bus, knowing the importance of training students, communicating plans earlier and involving others in the plan, and working and planning as team. The first thing the class discussed was general
procedures, including how to call in an emergency and who is responsible for calling 911. For instance, should the school bus driver call dispatch and then dispatch calls the police? That’s what Denny Coughlin, consultant as well as owner of the School Bus Training Company, recommended. He also suggested creating a phrase known throughout the department to initiate radio silence so emergency messages are heard loud and clear. When calling 911, information like exact location, landmarks and cross streets should be shared as well as the status of
those on board, and if they need any aide. Diandra Neugent, transportation manager for the
Community Council of Idaho, suggested breaking down each emergency and the procedures associ- ated with it. When a school bus travels into a dead zone where there is no cell service, for example, how are drivers going to handle that situation? She advised that all bus drivers should have their phones programmed with the SOS emergency feature, if available.
The class proceeded to discuss when to evacuate
(because of fire, bomb threat, if approaching water either on the side of the road or on the street, etc.) and knowing how to evacuate before the emergen- cy occurs (know what exits are available, how to break the windows, using the roof hatch, etc.) Other topics continued discussing what is on the bus that drivers and attendents will need to be taken with them in an emergency. These include blankets, student information, and first aid kits. Neugent add- ed that all her buses are equipped with go-bags that staff are required to take with them when evacuating.
Hands-On Learning The training transitioned to hands-on exercises
at four stations, which consisted of belt cutting and emergency evacuation devices (drag blankets), fire extinguishers, electric and manual wheelchair lift operations, and a timed evacuation drill. The latter tested the ability of participants to evacuate “stu- dents” secured in CSRSs and wheelchairs while the bus was filled with theater smoke. Editor’s Note: The students were various-sized
dolls to represent a range of age groups. Theater smoke is non-toxic and not as heavy as fire smoke. “It’s really nerve racking to walk through a bus that
you cannot see in,” commented attendee Denetria Clayborn, the special needs route coordinator for host Prosper ISD, after completing the smoke evac- uation drill. “…Even though it was just for practice, my heart is still beating fast [from] being nervous and trying to make sure you get all the kids.” She added this was her first time experiencing
such an exercise, but it opened her eyes to possibil- ities of future department training. “I think making sure that my drivers and monitors have evacuation
“Go-To Bags” on all Community Council of Idaho Head Start buses contain reflective vets, flashlights, hand warmers, directions for emergency use, and more. View a list of the go-bag essentials at
stnonline.com/go/e6.
www.stnonline.com 31
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