According to Wikipedia, a guardian angel is an angel assigned to protect and guide a particular person or group. Does this sound like anyone you know? While I was at Buffalo (N.Y.) Public Schools, it always comforted me to think of our drivers as a fleet of guardian angels; out on the streets day after day, protecting and guiding our children.
School buses are designed to create a safe haven for children. They are big, bright and beautiful, and their familiar shape and color tells the world what they are. They are staffed by highly vetted, trained and committed drivers and monitors. They are highly visible symbols of government-sponsored organizations. And, they are everywhere in our districts.
From dawn to after dusk, buses travel from corner-to-corner across the district. They are often the first and last impression parents have of a school district each day. They can start a child’s day off well, or be there to reassure a parent at the end of a day.
And with their alert driving attitudes and familiarity of the streets, our drivers are in an ideal position to be the watchdogs for the district and community. They know instantly when something does not look right because they understand the patterns and routines they witness every day. Using their two-way radios, they let us know about accidents, traffic problems, weather issues, downed branches or wires and stuck traffic signals. They are the first to spot problems at bus stops or school loading zones. They are the front line of creating a safe environment for our programs.
At Buffalo Public Schools, we occasionally used our drivers as our own version of Sherlock Holmes’ “Baker Street Irregulars.” During an emergency situation, such as a student who got off at a wrong stop, we would issue our version of a BOLO (“be on the look-out”). We would transmit the description and likely area of the child and drivers would immediately become an all-encompassing search team as they simultaneously went about their regular activities.
This type of role for bus drivers was even acknowledged by the Department of Homeland Security and TSA’s First Observer program, first developed in 2006 as the”Highway Watch,” designed so that bus and truck drivers could observe and report suspicious or illegal activity along highways and at truck stops and rest stops.
Bus drivers and monitors are the eyes and ears of our transportation programs — the guardian angels of school transportation. So the next time you become exasperated by some bus driver related issue, take a moment to stop and think of their role in this larger context and join me in saying thanks to all of our drivers and monitors for all they do for our children every day.
John P. Fahey is a former assistant superintendent who was responsible for the Buffalo, N.Y., Public Schools transportation program for 18 years. John now works on the Versatrans team for Tyler Technologies and sits on the new NAPT KPI (Key Performance Indicator) Committee.
