Kevin Settle won Iowa’s “Best of the Best Technician’s Training & Competition” on June 12 to qualify for NAPT’s national event scheduled for Sept. 24-27 at the Paccar facility in Seattle.
Twenty-three participants from 16 school districts attended the fifth-annual Iowa event last week held at Thomas Bus Sales in Des Moines. The technicians received a half-day of training before taking a written knowledge exam. The “hands on” competition then began to determine the “best of the best” and the state’s representative at the America’s Best School Bus Technician Skills and Training Competition at the end of the summer.
“Of course ‘best’ is only relative, since every one of our participants is an awesome mechanic and was a credit to our competition,” said Max Christensen, the state director of school transportation at the Iowa Department of Education, in an email to STN. “It was a great effort by all of the participants and to all those involved in putting the ‘Best of the Best’ together this year, and making it the most successful one yet!”
Settle of Western Dubuque Community Schools in Farley, Iowa, since January 2010, won the overall competition. The district is the largest geographically in the state at 555 square miles. Christensen said Settle was shocked upon hearing his name as the winner.
“He just sat there. It’s like he couldn’t believe it,” Christensen added.
The national winner then receives an award in October at the NAPT Summit conference in Grand Rapids, Mich.
