PHOENIX – School bus drivers should be trained to recognize abrupt personality changes and other aberrant behavior in their riders to help prevent the gun violence plaguing school campuses from spilling over onto school buses.
That was the consensus expressed to School Transportation News magazine by several experts on security and school campus violence at the 10th Annual National Security & Intelligence Symposium hosted by the College of Security & Intelligence at Prescott Arizona’s Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
The theme of this year’s symposium was “School Shootings: Prevention, Mitigation, Recovery.” The symposium was held in Phoenix on October 23, a day before freshman Jaylen Fryberg opened fire in the cafeteria of Marysville-Pilchuck High School near Seattle killing two students and wounding three others, including two relatives, before taking his own life.
School buses are considered an extension of the classroom but insulating their occupants from the same incidents of violence occurring on school campuses is a daunting task at best, and symposium speakers said buses must be pre-empted administratively. That means training for and communication between transportation employees.
“Since they are on the front lines, school bus drivers should get the same training and information as faculty,” said Manny Amado, chief of police at Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona. “Bus drivers are with students much of the time and they should be kept in the loop.”
Amado addressed the symposium on lessons learned from dealing with former student Jared Loughner, who shot and wounded former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, killed six people and wounded 13 others on Jan. 8, 2011 in Tucson.
Security expert Rich Wilson, a consultant for Sigma Threat Management Associates, a company working with the Pima Community College to bolster threat preparations, said lessons learned from responding to Loughner’s crimes could be used to help bus drivers recognize when a student may be on a “pathway to violence.”
Wilson said bus drivers need to be able to notice, for example, if a normally gregarious student, suddenly become withdrawn or a if a normally quiet student seems outgoing. He said drivers should pay attention to other students who may have expressed concerns about classmates.
“That’s where the leakage will come from to determine if someone is on a pathway to violence,” Wilson said. “It will happen from among peers not administrators or teachers.”
Wilson added that communication protocols should be put in place for drivers to express their concerns. “I’m sure if teachers and administrators listened to the experiences and observations of school bus drivers they would be amazed by the stories they would hear,” he said. “They also need to integrate bus drivers into threat assessment training. You’re not accusing anyone of anything if you are expressing an observation or concern.”
Tom Foley, symposium organizer and assistant professor in Embry-Riddle’s College of Security & Intelligence, said bus drivers need to be trained to recognize and react to threats and potential dangers, such as cars parked in suspicious places. “The school bus is a soft target and you’re limited in your options to make it a hard target,” Foley said. “You can never get rid of all the risk, but you can mitigate the consequences.”
John McGrath, who spoke on active shooter preparation for elementary and secondary schools, said the 1976 kidnapping of 26 children and the driver from their in bus Chowchilla, California should say all anyone needs to know about how school bus security relates to school security. “School buses are a much less controlled environment so the opportunities for assailants are much greater,” McGrath said. “Buses in Israel have long been targeted by terrorists.”
McGrath, head of Workplace Threat Assessment & Mitigation for Raytheon Missile Systems, agreed that school buses are soft targets, adding that he doubted whether they could be transformed into hard targets. “I’m not sure the bus is a good platform for security enhancement, so we should lean more toward administrative controls and that relates to driver training.”
