On the first day of school, more than 50,000 bright and shiny yellow school buses will roll out of transportation facilities all across our state. It is always a special day for those children who wait at their stop for their bus and their driver.
We take great pride in the fact that, in New York state, we transport over 2.3 million children from Day 1 through Day 180 of the school year. That makes the first day special as well for the 50,000 school bus drivers who take their place behind the wheel to greet all of those children. Our state’s excellent safety record and customer service track record do not happen by chance.
We contacted our members via Facebook and asked them to share what they were doing in this late summer to prepare for that first day and the next 180 days. Here is a sampling of what our members told us was occupying their Summer Days:
- Finalizing bus routes so that they efficiently pick up all the children who need their services.
- Receiving brand new school buses as approved for purchase by their taxpayers back in May.
- Conducting required 2-hour school bus driver refreshers to inform drivers of new rules, policies or best way practices.
- Preparing mailings for parents about 2017-2018 school bus schedules so the parents can plan their work and family plans.
- Scheduling medical physicals as required by law to ensure school bus driver readiness.
- Completing routing for special needs students who need specific equipment or transport to distant schools for their educations.
- Coordinating with homeless liaisons to ensure that homeless students are transported from their current residence safely.
- Completing CPR, AED (defibrillator) and Epi-Pen training for drivers and attendants.
- Scheduling School Bus Safety Drills as required by state law.
- Revising and updating driver manuals and handbooks.
- Getting the details worked out for new parent notification systems that use social media networks or cell-phone capacity to advise parents of the arrival of their child’s school bus.
- Conducting “reasonable suspicion” training to ensure that each driver is not compromised by alcohol or drugs.
- Recruit for new school bus drivers to help remediate the shortage of school bus drivers.
- Training newly hired drivers to ensure they are licensed and ready to drive when school starts.
- Preparing for kindergarten orientation, an exciting day when new kindergarteners get their first school bus experience and learn bout safety measures.
- Engaging with Pre-K programs to ensure safe transportation to those program sites
- Coordinating with child care agencies to ensure safe transportation to those services.
- Completing RFPs and contracts with SED and private contractors for transportation services.
- Working with state agencies at DOT, DMV and SED to ensure their mandatory paperwork and certifications are in place.
- Completing summer school transportation services.
Quite a busy time of year for the women and men who are dedicated to the safe transportation of our school children to and from school each day. Further proof that safety does not happen by chance.
We recognize and thank transportation managers and private contractor fleet owners and managers, as well as the thousands of dispatchers and schedulers, technicians and mechanics, safety trainers, office support staff, attendants and all of our school bus drivers plus all the service and equipment vendors and distributors who partner with us…each has a special role in ensuring safety.
We urge the public to learn more about what goes into the School Bus Safety Formula in their area. We think you will be impressed and excited to learn how much effort and commitment goes into school bus safety. For the children.
