The Case is Made (Once Again) for Keeping Teens from Driving Their Peers

Another sad story unfolded prior to the Labor Day weekend when a 17-year-old boy fell out of a vehicle driven by an 18-year-old friend and was run over by a school bus. It happened in Willis, Texas, near Houston Friday afternoon as the victim’s brother and a busload of students watched in horror.

The Texas Department of Public Safety said the school bus driver had no time to react when Alex Caballero fell out of a car driven by Jose Juan Sanchez and into the path of the bus. According to the DPS, Caballero had just missed his bus and was receiving a ride home from Sanchez when the incident occurred. Apparently, Sanchez had been in an altercation earlier in the day with another student, as he and Caballero left the Willis High School parking lot, the fight resumed. What happened next turned tragic.

Someone in the other vehicle threw a car mirror at Caballero's vehicle, striking Caballero. He returned the mirror toward the other vehicle, at which point he apparently either fell out of Sanchez's car or was trying to get out to escalate the fight. He fell to the pavement and was run over by the school bus.

Incorporating the School Bus into Back to School Bus Night

By Ryan Gray

The About.com Special Needs Children blog had an interesting post today from writer Terry Mauro on the importance of parents attending their child's back to school night. She says more and more parents are skipping out on the annual rite of passage, as it appears busy schedules or plain disinterest are at play.

I can't say that I'm surprised, though it still is disheartening that so many parents don't or can't make the time to attend. Mauro provides a list of 10 reasons why back to school night is a must for parents. Mauro speaks from the special needs angle, but I write about it here in the Daily Routes blog because it rings true for all parents, especially those whose kids ride the school bus.

One evening a year is not too much to ask to get to know your child's teachers, the parents of your child's classmates. It's a great opportunity to see your child's classroom(s) and gauge the type of learning environment available to them. My question is, how many back to school nights also include school bus drivers? Despite budget cuts, I think it would be a great idea for schools to find the money to pay drivers for two extra hours to attend back to school night and to make themselves available to parents. It would be doubly grand if the school could incorporate some sort of school bus introduction or training for those parents whose kids ride yellow. Perhaps it's already done. I'd love to hear about it.

Bus Cuts a Punishment to Voters? You Bet

Like many school districts nationwide, Upper Township School District in Petersburg, N.J., located near Ocean City is saddled with immense budget cuts. This school year, the district saw its operating budget reduced by nearly $1 million, and transportation was one of the program losers. To make ends meet, the school board to relocate school bus stops from neighborhood cul-de-sacs to hubs along busy area highways and to start school later in the day. And parents aren't too thrilled.

But, according to news reports, many of those same parents voted down a new school budget. So the parents are saying that the school district is using the school bus stop changes as a way to penalize them.

Actually, that's probably not too far from the truth. The parents are being penalized, and worse yet so are their children. But I wouldn't say it's the school district's fault. As superintendent Vincent Palmierri says:

"We were charged to eliminate almost $1 million without impacting education ... It’s hard. I don’t know how you do that without impacting education. We heard the community clearly and very loudly. We had a very defeated budget for a lot of reasons."

Sometimes it takes an economic downturn to show people reality. I don't relish tax increases, but I recognize that something has to give when it comes to expecting public services when there is only so much money to go around. Certainly, a case could be made for ensuring that money is spent in the wisest, most efficient manner. But according to this news article, it appears that is exactly what the school district is trying to do amid new state regulations for budget oversight.

You would think the recession would have taught us all a lesson by now that at some point society must be willing to shoulder the burden for increased costs of certain services or accept that those services will be reduced or eliminated.

NSTA's Robin Leeds on CNN: 20% of Schools are Reducing Transportation

By Ryan Gray

Robin Leeds, the industry consultant to the National School Transportation Association and a 2009 STN EXPO keynote speaker, was just interviewed on CNN Newsroom regarding massive budget cuts nationwide that are hitting schools, and as a result school transportation services are falling by the wayside.

The American Association of School Administrators recently reported via a survey of its members conducted last month that 44 percent of schools are eliminating field trips and 35 percent are consolidating bus routes as a way to deal with strangling budget freezes and eliminations. Forty-eight states are experiencing shortfalls in their budgets that are affecting education. Today, Leeds told CNN anchor Kyra Phillips that 20 percent of the nation's schools are experiencing some kind of cutback to regular school bus route services.

Phillips, who said she rode the school bus as a child, expressed outrage and asked what effect these cuts will have on child safety, such as opening up students to sexual predators.

While Leeds didn't touch on the sexual predator topic, she did mention that only about 20 students are killed in or around the school bus each year, about 16 on average who aren't even riding the bus at the time and are struck as pedestrians who just disembarked the bus or were about to board, according to U.S. DOT estimates. Sometimes these kids are hit by the bus itself, but more often they are struck by passing motorists. Meanwhile, Leeds said some 800 students on average are killed each year on their way to or from school in other vehicles, waking or riding bicycles, again based on federal estimates.

Leeds did relay to Phillips and viewers a phone call she recently received from a grandmother living in Indiana who was concerned about recent cuts made at her 8-year-old grandchild's school district.

Lack of money was forcing the schools to reduce routes to the point that a local church parking lot was being designated as student congregation area for morning pick-ups and drop-offs. The grandchild lives 3/4 miles from the church, but the only route to and from the church is along a busy four-lane highway with a posted 55 mph speed limit and no shoulder due to highway construction.

As the segment ran out of time, Phillips promised Leeds that CNN would stay on top of the issue and would bring her back in the near future.

Keeping the Rubber on the Road: NYC Senior Citizens to Ride School Buses for Free

NYC School Buses to be Used for Access-A-Ride Program When Not Transporting Students

By Lisa J. Hudson

School buses that sit idle between their morning and afternoon runs would be put in service to transport New York City's senior citizens under a proposed quality of life improvement plan announced August 25 by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The offer of free bus transportation to supermarkets to increase access to healthy food options is just one of 59 recommendations announced at a joint press conference with the Mayor, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and the New York Academy of Medicine, which praised the recommendations as a blueprint to enhance city's livability for older New Yorkers.

"Department of Education school buses, when they are not needed to transport students, will be available to older New Yorkers at no charge," the recommendation report, Age Friendly NYC Enhancing Our City’s Livability for Older New Yorkers, states. Transportation will be provided for older adults from senior centers and naturally occurring retirement communities (NORCs) to supermarkets throughout the five boroughs.

Mayor Bloomberg explained, “We’re going to be using our school buses, which, if you think about it, stand vacant for a large part of the day, to shuttle older New Yorkers to and from grocery stores.”

The New York Times, reporting from the press conference, stated that the cost of using school buses for this program, "would be minimal, since the drivers are already paid for more hours than they actually work," and went on to quote Linda I. Gibbs, the deputy mayor for health and human services, who said, "We’ve purchased the full day’s service, so it’s within the contract."

The article did not offer a reaction by school bus drivers, the unions that represent them or the private school bus operations whose drivers would be impacted. The idea for using school buses to transport New York City's older residents comes from a pilot program in Brooklyn which started providing rides to an estimated 1,800 New Yorkers last year.

The idea of riding the school bus for this program garnered mixed reactions. Most seniors who spoke with the New York Times were skeptical, and their concerns included the potential lack of room for them to sit comfortably, that air conditioning would be a must, and that the lack of bathroom facilities on board would also be of concern.

On the other hand, given some of the criticisms of Access-a-Ride, the federally-mandated service for people who cannot use public transit usually due to mobility impairments, and taxis by seniors in the blueprint report, the school bus may provide the balance the administration is seeking.

For example, in the blueprint, seniors noted several reliability and efficiency concerns with Access-A-Ride. The Mayor acknowledged these cost efficiency concerns at the press conference, saying that, “You see the Access-A-Ride vans going all around the city, many times with only one or two people in them.”

Additionally, seniors indicated in the blueprint report that many taxis and livery cabs are not wheelchair accessible or easy to get in and out of. For other transportation initiatives where Access-A-Ride, taxis and livery cabs will be needed, the plan is to improve these services by adding GPS and implementing phone notification system in Access-A-Ride vans and a creating a better matching system of accessible taxis and livery cabs with seniors that need these features.

But going back to the school bus issue, the paper did speak with one supporter of the idea: Lovette Glasgow, a 75-year-old retired teacher, who was more willing to give the school buses a chance, and told the paper, “I’m a former educator so I know about yellow school buses. The bus is fine."

The mayor's committee is said to want to have the school bus for a senior’s initiative running by next month.

School Transportation Has No Immunity from Decisions About the Flu

By Peggy Burns

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released its “Guidance for State and Local Public Health Officials and School Administrators for School (K-12) Responses to Influenza during the 2009-2010 School Year.” CDC predicts that schools and health officials can help protect 1/5 of the country’s population from flu by implementing its suggestions. School transportation professionals should be aware:

• Staff members with flu-like illness should be urged to stay home for at least 24 hours after they no longer have a fever, or signs of a fever, without the use of fever-reducing medicines.
• Cleaning bus interiors thoroughly would appear to comport with the CDC recommendation that “School staff should routinely clean areas that students and staff touch often with the cleaners they typically use.”
• School administrators are urged to “balance the risks of flu” with the “disruption dismissals will cause in both education and the wider community.”
• While direct impacts on school transportation operations are not addressed in the Guidance, school transportation administrators are, perhaps, in the best position to consider proactively what those impacts may be and discuss them with school district officials.

Peggy Burns is an attorney/consultant with Education Compliance Group, Inc. Peggy can be reached at (888) 604-6141 and by email to ecginc@qwestoffice.net.

Making Them Feel the Hurt

Here in Colorado, like elsewhere, school districts are cutting stops and consolidating routes, and parents are expressing concern. For the second time in as many weeks, I recently heard a respected school district administrator comment “Let them feel the hurt.” When I was in-house counsel, that was a typical reaction from management when the community had voted down a mill levy increase or bond issue. We often felt that parents had to experience the true cost of their decision, and if band programs or class size was impacted, that was, after all, the point of going to the public for money. I’m finding myself wondering if, in fact, budget cuts necessitated by our economic recession really warrant the same brusqueness.

In any event, it seemed like an apropos time to suggest that we do everything in our power to ensure that the “hurt” affects only convenience and not safety or student achievement. Think about ways you can minimize the possibility that student welfare and school attendance will suffer. Monitor closely the effects of the changes you’ve been forced to make. We’re all in this one together, and we need to weigh and minimize the risks attentively.

Peggy Burns is an attorney/consultant with Education Compliance Group, Inc. Peggy can be reached at (888) 604-6141, and by email.