Doing More With Less Student transporters should have written policies and procedures
for managing incidents that involve the school bus. But with possible scenarios running the gamut of crashes to student behavior issues to angry calls from parents—all occurring over a 180-day school year— how do staff members keep up with the resulting immense amount of paperwork as well as follow up on every incident? Consultant TransPar offers a solution with its aptly named Incident Management System, or IMS. The web-based software is in use in doz- ens of schools nationwide, including Bethlehem Area School District in Pennsylvania. Jennifer Robinson, the district’s transportation general manager, has worked for TransPar since it began providing manage- ment services starting in the 2019-2020 school year. Very quickly, Robinson said IMS became a vital to responding to the immense amount of parent phone calls during the COVID-19 pandemic. But first, beginning in August 2019, IMS was crucial in facilitating
internal communications. BASD implemented a temporary team of a half-dozen customer service specialists to address common parental questions at school startup related to bus stop locations, bus assign- ments, and transportation eligibility. But due to space constraints in the transportation department building, the customer service team set up a call center at the elementary school next door. “IMS became a lifeline between those two locations, because for me
to walk next door, into the front, all the way to the back of the building and up the stairs to see these six or seven people is very time-con- suming and not a very effective means of communication,” Robinson recalled. “We knew this was going to be a tool we were going to use.” The customer service team fielded 2,000 phone calls from August
through mid-September, alone. But that is simply scratching the ser- vice on the capabilities of IMS. The system, Robinson explained, can be used to track crashes, illegal passing of school bus stops, on-board incidents, slips and falls, and student conduct and management. She added that BASD will begin beta testing school bus and student location app functionality next school year, with full implementation planned for the 2023-2024 school year. “It allows you to input as much or as little information, depending
on what you want to use it for … You never know what will be statisti- cally important until you see it,” she said, likening IMS to a scrapbook of operations during a school year. “We’re not there yet, but we are working toward it.” In addition to tracking the number of phone calls received from
parents, IMS tracks dates and times to create an incident report. It tracks the numbers of times a particular student received a behavior referral. It allows for request of video footage and tracks who and when requested it. “Full-time staff has started to see the value of this by doing more
with less. As budgets are being cut, we won’t necessarily be able to hire more staff,” Robinson added. “It helps to force the issue of or present the argument for cross-training that is going to allow us to flatten our [organizational] chart. You don’t need more people doing individual jobs but the right people as utility players.” -Ryan Gray
active shooter events,” he said. Some larger districts
with communication centers that moni- tor live cameras do geofencing, which can provide a radius around a shooting or a hostage situation and help with decisions on lockdowns and school bus re-routing. Training is another
critical component. Dorn’s team runs
audio and video simulations for bus drivers. “They have 30 seconds to tell us what they would do,” he said. “We compare what they told us with what they should do based on their poli- cies, emergency plans or communication systems.” Some training pro- grams such as “Run. Hide. Fight.” can be misapplied and result in someone getting killed, Dorn added. “Typically, there’s a
component where you throw objects at a per- son with a gun who’s shooting or you phys- ically confront them. They say you only do that as a last resort but don’t teach people in a practical way what a last resort is,” Dorn said. “We’re seeing a hostage situation turn into a shooting because the person has a gun and must be an active shooter, but they’re [actually] not.” The shooter may announce he or she has a gun and if no
52 School Transportation News • MAY 2022
one moves, they won’t get hurt. “But then they do
move and the per- son is now prompted to fire,” explained Dorn. “We’ve had about 12 educators and students killed to date because of those types of things. We’ve had $130 million paid out in out-of-court settlements by school districts and law en- forcement agencies for shootings where those type of train- ings have recently been done.” Dorn advises
districts that have utilized “Run. Hide. Fight.”training to instead seek programs designed for bus drivers that address concerns unique to their particular in-bus and bus stop circum- stances.
The type of train-
ing Dorn’s team does focuses on pattern matching recognition.
Learn more from Mike Dorn and Safe Havens
International about pattern matching and recognition at
stnonline.com/go/bp.
While a security expert can identify situations others can’t, a bus driver can spot anomalies because of their experience driv- ing the bus, especially for those who’ve been on a particular route for a long time. “It’s usually your
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