SPECIAL REPORT
Are You
Ready? As the industry prepares for
compliance with
federal entry-level driver training regulations,
support also grows for school-bus specific licenses
Written by Debbie Curtis
S
tudent transporters seeking clarity on new min- imum training requirements to obtain a Class A and Class B commercial driver licenses don’t have much time to prepare, as the impending
compliance date is Feb. 7. The Moving Ahead for Prog- ress in the 21st Century Act, or MAP-21, federal highway authorization and funding bill addresses two new com- ponents for training applicants, the Entry Level Driver Training (ELDT) and the Trainer Provider Registry (TPR). “Only trainers that are listed on the Trainer Provider
Registry and meet the criteria are able to train new driv- ers,” explained Jeff Cassell, president of the School Bus Safety Company. To accomplish this, he continued, the location must be
registered with the FMCSA before Feb. 7, which will then assign that location a unique TPR. The FMCSA website asks the name, address and other information, and it then provides a dozen questions to answer. When that is submitted, the unique TPR identification is generated. “Going forward, say you train John Doe to get his CDL, and he’s ready for licensing,” Cassell added. “You go back into FMCSA, key in your unique TPR number and John Doe’s information and submit it. That information is fed to each state’s website, so when John walks into the DMV he is able to get his license.” The other part of MAP-21 are the new items to be
covered with entry level drivers. “I compared the 303 separate practices listed and identified 26 that were not
20 School Transportation News • NOVEMBER 2021
previously required,” Cassell relayed. He added those new practices to training modules he
created, which he said take about an hour to complete. Cassell concluded that much of the new requirements were confusing, in that the laws were written to apply to dump trucks, UPS trucks and many other vehicles. “The listing of what practices to teach don’t specify
how long or what to teach, they just say, ‘You shall teach it’,” he said. “For instance, I never taught where or when to fuel, but it’s in the supplement now. Hours of service are extremely important in the trucking world, not as much with school buses, but we teach that now as well.” He explained that some of the requirements now
included that aren’t as important to the pupil transpor- tation industry include proper cargo securement, fuel economy from using a proper shifting technique, and coupling/uncoupling. “I’ll be honest,” Cassell continued, “some of material
isn’t that important because it doesn’t apply to school bus operations. The FMSCA’s reasoning is that if you have that CDL for a school bus, you can go drive other Class B vehicles, so trainees should know these things just in case.” He did note that many of the regulations include the phrase “as applicable,” meaning one could logically avoid teaching coupling/uncoupling, for instance. But confusion enters the picture when “as applicable” is not attached to other rules.
PHOTO COURTESY OF CAMPBELL COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT IN WYOMING
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