YOUR KEEP
COOL
OUR RADIATORS LET YOU
being snowplowed. She explained the Department of Highways cannot plow on private property. When this happens, she said transportation sends messages to parents with either a note that their route was canceled or if possible new bus stop locations and times. She added that transpor- tation is looking at buying a snowplow to avoid this situation.
Routing By Hand Lincoln County is one of the 26 percent of districts that shared in a re-
cent STN survey that doesn’t use routing software. Stone said designated stops exist for students to meet at, and every student is offered trans- portation. She noted that each year drivers write down their routes after receiving stop information, and she will tweak them as needed. She noted that drivers have through the first full month of school to get their routes revised, and then any changes are reviewed and approved before being implemented. If a student who has hasn’t ridden the bus before shows up to a stop, the
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driver gives them a form to fill out that will be added to the driver’s route sheet. She said routes could be updated multiple times throughout the school year as students start and stop riding the bus. “I am a smaller county, so for every bus I have a call out, they bring me in their emergency cards, and then I fix up a spreadsheet for every bus,” she said, adding that staff use Thrillshare, a school messaging software, which contains each bus number, the student roster and phone numbers. “When we’re not running a certain route, or we have to combine or the bus is late, I just go into Thrillshare type out a message and it voice calls and texts the parents with the number that’s on file, saying, ‘Hey bus 225 is running late today or we’re combining bus 225 … please expect delays.’ That way, [parents] are prepared.”
Walking Zones & Hazards Ware explained that Garland ISD divides its community into transport
zones and reviews hazardous areas. The first step for a student registering for transportation is ensuring they are located within a transport zone. Banner added that once the students are routed, their information goes into the Stopfinder app so parents can view the routes. This, she said, has reduced the number of phone calls to transportation. “We also use the Wayfinder tablets and it all communicates and works together and makes for a happy community,” Banner said, adding that RFID cards for student ridership verification are coming. Walterscheid at Goose said the walking distance is not a hard and fast
rule. “We have hazardous routes,” he explained. “But we use a formula by which we examine everything. We look at the child’s age, number of crossings, we look at the distance, we look at the environment, the neigh- borhood.”
Rick Walterscheid, the director of transportation at Goose Creek ISD in Texas, likened routing to having a puzzle, ripping the picture off, smashing all the pieces and then trying to fit the pieces back together then.
42 School Transportation News • MARCH 2024
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