plans in place,” Clayborn added. “We do have seating charts on our buses and on our Google drive so that whoever calls emergency response knows where the kids are at. But making sure that they remain calm and knowing the proper way to duck down and get off the bus if they ever had to evacuate.” Meanwhile, Joseph Muna traveled
more than 30 hours from the Northern Mariana Islands to attend the con- ference and the exercise. Muna, the safety officer for the pupil transporta- tion office in public schools there, said he registered for TSD to obtain more insights, references and to network. He commented that he is looking to better develop the pupil transportation skills in the islands.
“The best thing about this class was
it was a hands-on training and lot of information was shared amongst each other,” he said. “We’re going to bring it back to the islands to expand our knowledge and train our drivers. It’s all for the safety of our kids.” He noted that the smoke-filled school
bus itself was eye-opening. “It brings out a different perspective of how it really is in an emergency environment,” he said, adding that the training was a great tool and learning experience, and he expressed hope that it is continued in years to come at TSD. “On a professional note, being a safety officer, they need to introduce this to all of the drivers … so that they can be exposed to these types of emergencies that they could be encountering in the real world.” Muna added that he recorded video
footage on his phone from the evac- uation training and planned to take it home to use as a training tool so that his drivers can have a visual. “Always treat training and information as
growth for your development,” he said. Meanwhile, Teri Mapengo, the
director of transportation at Mesquite Independent School District in Rock- wall, Texas (pictured in the beanie on this month’s cover alongside Texas State Director Christie Hebert), added that while the bus was filling up with smoke, she was imagining real students on board. “It was bringing me back to what it would be like for any of our students and that panic of ‘I need to get off this bus,’” she shared. She noted that having evacuation training for not only the school bus drivers and attendants but also the students is vital to ensuring everyone knows what to do in an emergency. The sessions at the TSD conference have provided her opportunities and ideas to bring back to her district, to ensure the transportation department, as well as the public and school district employees are in the know and properly trained. “We really got some good ideas that
we are bringing back to our district, and that’s why we come to these confer- ences,” she concluded. Coughlin explained that while the
time it takes for a school bus to be fully engulfed in flames varies, based on the type of fire and the source of the flames, he noted that an industry standard is to evacuate everyone in under two min- utes. He noted that smoke inhalation and not the flames is often the leading cause of death, so time is of the essence. He recommended evacuations be com- pleted in under two minutes. However, very few groups were able to evacuate all students on board before Coughlin’s two-minute timer went off, further acknowledging the need for training and emergency evacuation plans. ●
The final two days of the 2022 TSD Conference, featured hands-on training for attendees and included the all-day evacuation training on Nov. 12. Watch an overview at STN’s YouTube channel.
32 School Transportation News • JANUARY 2023 The TSD Conference
evacuation training class was led by Launi Harden, the
latest addition to the tenured faculty. She was joined by fellow STN editorial advisor Denny Coughlin, owner of the School Bus
Training Company, who has taught evacuation training and the filled the bus with smoke at STN EXPO Reno as
well as torn apart 200 school buses in drills and training exercises. Joing them were Aaron Harris, national sales and training manager for BESI, and Diandra Neugent, transportation manager for the
Community Council of Idaho.
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