The National Congress on School Transportation Steering Committee announced that writing committees for the 2020 update to the National School Transportation Specifications and Procedures (NSTSP) are seeking proposals to make changes to the industry best-practices.
Any interested party can propose a change to the best-practices manual until March 31 of next year. The 11 writing committees, including the new “Emerging Technology in School Transportation,” are posted online, with contact information for their respective chairperson and coordinator, along with instructions on submitting proposed changes.
All requests must be submitted by the deadline with the form instructions, to allow the Writing Committees time to review and properly research the proposals before the 2020 Congress. Congress procedures stipulate that the Writing Committee chairs must notify all individuals who are submitting change requests of the status of their respective requests following the committees’ deliberations and decisions. This feedback to submitters must occur “well prior” to the onsite Congress, which is scheduled for May 17-20 in Des Moines, Iowa.
The process for each state to announce its state delegation representatives will be announced next summer by each of the sponsoring organizations.
The Steering Committee is also asking any subject matter experts who are not currently a member of one of the 11 writing committees, but who wish to be added, to contact the appropriate chair.
The NCST Steering Committee consists of NASDPTS, the National Association for Pupil Transportation, National School Transportation Association and National Safety Council. It met last week in Kansas City during the NAPT Summit and NASDPTS Annual Meeting. The Steering Committee chair is Patrick McManamon, state director of transportation with the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles and president-elect of NASDPTS.
Formerly known as the National Conference on School Transportation until 2010, the meeting dates back to 1939. Frank Cyr coordinated the first meeting with funding from a Rockefeller Foundation grant and held it at Teachers College on the campus of Columbia University. The first meeting was called to discuss challenges with transporting rural students to and from school, but it is best remembered for standardizing the color of all school buses nationwide as yellow.
