Summer is supposed to be the time when educators and school employees enjoy some well-deserved R&R after a long school year. In reality, it’s a time to find additional work to make ends meet. The same goes for their employers.
Education Week reports that school districts are facing a grim future, as evidenced by a survey of more than 400 school districts by the Center on Education Policy. The non-profit found that 84 percent of the districts of all shapes and sizes said they anticipate additional funding cuts during the coming school year. Many of those cuts will come at the expense of personnel layoffs, not a welcome message by classified employees such as transportation professionals this summer.
The study is the latest to point to the on-going budget troubles for school districts that are resulting in mass layoffs.
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The issue of motorcoach safety continues to heat up. USA Today writes that the real number of these commercial bus crashes is much higher than the federal government reports, this after yet another motorcoach crash this week claimed the life of former North Carolina State University basketball star Lorenzo Charles, who made the winning basket in th 1983 NCAA men’s basketball championship against heavily-favored University of Houston. USA Today investigated findings by NHTSA and found that many additional crashes that are not a part of federal records handed over to Congress.
The newspaper said that at least 14 crashes and 32 motorcoach occupant fatalities are not included in NHTSA data for the years 2003 through 2009.
While the feds consider motorcoaches extremely safe, and there is frequent mention of motorcoaches alongside school buses, student transportation professionals may beg to differ. After all, several high-profile and fatal “school bus” crashes over the past several years, including one in Beaumont, Texas, involving a high school girl’s softball team, were in fact motorcoach crashes.
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When Great Britain adopted its own version of the yellow school bus several years ago, it was inevitable that there would be some growing pains or, at the least, realization of many of the same challenges affecting student transporters in the United States and Canada. And just like here, student behavior and bullying on board school buses in the UK is a growing problem.
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Here is a tragic example from Staten Island, N.Y., of what can happen potentially happen when school bus routes are cut.
