School districts and transportation departments have been forced to do more with less for at least the last four, and in most cases many more, years. Well worn efficiency techniques such as bell time changes and alternative routing strategies were generally adequate to accommodate funding cuts in the initial years. It must be recognized that initial efforts to “cut the fat” have continued down to the marrow.

Efforts to “efficiency” our way around structural funding problems or long-term funding reductions are both ineffective and unsustainable. Service levels will decline, fleets will get older, and paradoxically costs are likely to increase as transportation managers continue to try to accommodate increasing educational demands with decreasing resources. If this trajectory is correct, it is an indication that as an industry we must make greater efforts to demonstrate the value of transportation.

The amount of funding provided to any specific function is ultimately a statement by policy makers about priorities. This was never clearer than when I watched a wise superintendent explain to his school board that his transportation department, “Could do anything they wanted but not everything they wanted.”

This is likely to be an increasingly common refrain as districts continue to make difficult choices about what services to offer and how to provide them. While we are never absolved from our responsibility to use the resources provided efficiently, it must also be understood that over time the amount of service provided must be reconciled with the funding provided.

As the 50 state funding formulas and the various allowances for supplemental revenue demonstrate, there is clearly no national consensus on how to value or support transportation. The coming funding debates will require all stakeholders to communicate with a clear voice and a clear vision as to why transportation should be a priority and the implications on service delivery if it is not.

Tim Ammon is a consultant with Management Partnership Services, Inc., in Rockville, Md. He has extensive experience in system implementation and use and evaluating school bus routes and schedules and has analyzed all aspects of transportation and fleet management operations. Ammon also assists in the specification and implementation of transportation software applications.

The purpose of this research is to develop procedures to assess technologies that prevent or delay fire penetration into the occupant compartment, in order to increase passenger evacuation time, through detection warning systems, suppression/extinguishment and flammability/fire hardening of exterior materials.

Interested companies were asked to submit Corporate Capability Statements that demonstrate ability and interest in no more than 10 pages.

The NHTSA request is for planning purposes only. There was no timetable for when a study, if any, would be conducted.

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While the announcement doesn't directly affect new school bus production, news from Navistar this week that it is partnerning with Clean Energy Fuels Corp. to add natural gas options for its heavy-duty truck customers. Then, Cummins Westport announced it will be supplying Navistar with its natural gas ISL G engine for International TranStar and WorkStar trucks.

The only alternative fuel options currently offered to IC Bus customers are the charge-sustaining and charge-depleting CE Series hybrids, the latter model the first plug-in school buses in the nation first introduced in 2006. Ever since, the alternative-fuel space has grown considerably. But look for this week's natural gas news to have some trickle-down effects for IC Bus in the future, as often occurs when new projects are implemented in the commercial space.

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On a related Navistar note, the company announced it formally submitted its 0.2g NOx in-cylinder engine certification data to the EPA to recertify its MaxxForce line. The company was warned last month by CARB that its engine credits to meet the 2010 on-road diesel emissions requirements were set to expire.

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The American School Bus Council redesigned its website. The organization is also still planning to hold a national "Love the Bus" event in in

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Ralph Knight, director of transportation at Napa Valley (Calif.) Unified School District, alerted us that he will soon take delivery of two new Collins NexBus hybrid Type A school buses. They will be the second and third buses of its kind to operate in the state. Napa Valley purchased the first Collins hybrid three years ago. Knight said the California Highway Patrol approved the green rub rails, as state regulations normally specify only black rub rails be used on school buses.

Knight also said the district will also soon take delivery of new 71-passenger Thomas Built C2e hybrids.

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Europe's fiscal woes are well documented, and look no further for proof that student transportation is not exempt, just as it is here in the States. Association Internationale Pour la Securite du Transport des Jeunes, better known as AIST, reported it its Winter 2012 newsletter that Belgium experienced a spike in requested transportation service in 2011 amid a nearly complete blockage of funding. The Societe Regionale Wallonne de Transport, the main transportation leader in the Walloon region, the predominantly French-speaking southern region of the country, was forced to reduce the number of students transported with the local school transportation system.

Sound familiar?

As transportation directors, our jobs encompass all of these descriptions and more. We keep kids safe. We provide service. We impact the educational process. We manage resources. We communicate. We innovate. We plan. We learn new skills. We create the opportunity for success. We use our people skills, our mechanical skills, our technical skills, our fiscal skills, our logistical skills daily, all hopefully ladled with a generous sense of humor and common sense. It is just as important for us to know about tailpipe emissions as it is to know about autism.

The career we have chosen is one that attracts and produces some of the most interesting and dynamic personalities around. This is no job for the meek of heart. How many times have you woken with your head full of challenges that needed to be faced in the coming day? How many times have you driven home exhausted but satisfied that you were really able to make a difference?

There is no one correct way to be a transportation director. We can do our job by being a good communicator, by developing a network, by our commitment to lifelong learning, by being a good listener. We can do our job by being visible in our bus yards, school sites and community. We can do our job most effectively simply by caring about the outcome.

What is the product of our work? Why does the school board pay us the big bucks? The best answer is contained in the mission statement common to many of our programs “To provide safe, efficient and professional transportation service for our students while supporting the district educational mission.”

Our challenges are many but our rewards are very real. The bottom line of our job is to make a difference for kids, which is pretty important work when you think about it. This note is written with the sincerest admiration for the amazing work Transportation Directors accomplish every day.

Keep on driving!

John P. Fahey is a former assistant superintendent who was responsible for the Buffalo, N.Y., CSD transportation program for 18 years. John now works on the Versatrans team for Tyler Technologies and sits the new NAPT KPI (Key Performance Indicator) Committee.

Meanwhile, last month, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a Head Start Safety Report from a May 2009 through October 2010 audit of three Head Start grantees from each of eight States that were most at risk for noncompliance with health and safety regulations and standards.

"The results of the HHS audit of Head Start programs at-risk for noncompliance with health safety regulations and standards are a testament to the Head Start community's shared commitment to ensuring the safest, highest-quality programs for the over one million children and families Head Start and Early Start serves every year," said Yasmina Vinci, executive director of NHSA, in a statement.

The audit targeted 24 grantees with a high risk for non-compliance, 21 of which immediately corrected deficiencies, with the three remaining grantees losing Head Start funding. Vinci added that themore than 1,600 Head Start grantees nationwide recognize that "providing a safe early learning environment is a primary goal and remains committed to excellence in the pursuit of quality."

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If you haven't heard much from Allison Transmission, Inc., of late on the school bus side, it might be because the company is undergoing a "dark period" as the company prepares to for an intial public offering of stock. The company announced its intent last spring as it sought to raise $750 million. We last read in November that the company was still chasing the IPO, according to the Indiana Business Journal.

We heard earlier this month that there remains confidence the offering will proceed as plan, but for now the company isn't making much news, which is common for organizations in similar positions. Still, it's not like Allison has completely flown under the radar. Allison just released the new 1350 model for its Pupil Transport/Shuttle Series. Earlier this month, it also announced it is equipping Mitsubishi Aero Star transit buses in Japan with its automatic transmissions for mountainous driving.

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Several STN readers commented to us this week that a webinar presentation by the Enterprise Wireless Alliance's Mark Crosby on the FCC two-way radio narrowbanding mandate that goes into effect next year was the first time the issue was explained to them in a manner that they understood. That's music to our ears, which is why we are discussions with him to give a curtain call at this summer's STN EXPO conference in Reno, Nev. Special thanks for the webinar also goes to sponsor Motorola Solutions.

In addition to the archived webinar, here's a download of the Power Point presentation.

Next month, transportation safety consultant Ted Finlayson-Schueler is scheduled to present a webinar on utilizing the school bus as a travel training tool for students with disabilities. Stay tuned for details.

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Aaron Gunderson, the man convicted of hitting and killing 7-year-old Kadyn Halverson last May in Worth County, Iowa, as she was attempting to cross the street to her waiting school bus, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. According to police and eyewitness reports, Gunderson hit Halvorson after blowing past the school buses' stop arm and dragged the little girl 200 feet before her body was thrown free. Gunderson did not stop.

When police later arrested him, Gunderson asked if he had hit a deer. The incident prompted Kadyn's Law, which has been introduced in Iowa to strengthen penalties for motorists who illegally pass stopped school buses. As we reported earlier, the bill also calls for a study of the effectiveness of cameras to catch motorists in the act.

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So much of the national, and world, news over the past couple of weeks has centered on the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia that was run into rocks off of the Tuscan coast on Jan. 13, one of the most egregious examples of driver (or in this case captain) error in recent history. It's being referred to as our generation's Titanic. Not to make light of the loss of life in this horrible crash caused by a complete lack of judgement, if not outright stupidity tinged with an appaling amount of cowardice, but we couldn't resist posting this photo submitted to us by a reader with the following caption. Sometimes laughter, especially on a Friday, is the best medicine.

Italian Cruise ship captain Francesco Schettino began his job as a bus driver yesterday...

I was traveling down a two-lane, one-way street. I had two of my five wonderful kids in the car with me, seat belted of course. Seat belts are something in my youth, I am embarrassed to admit, I rarely wore myself, but am glad on this day that I chose to as an example for my children.

The speed limit was 45 mph and traffic was fairly busy at this time of day. I was driving in the left lane as I was going to make a left turn in a couple blocks. The radio was on and the kids were singing along with the song, if that’s what you want to call it. The thought ran through my head of what my mom called the music I listened to as a young kid. Now I knew exactly what she was talking about when she said “turn that garbage off!”

As we drove down the road, I could see that the woman in the big, four-wheel drive in front of us was doing something in the cab of her truck as she went from one side to the other as if she was looking for something. She reached into the glove box and then sat up straight and saw that she had drifted into the left and jerked the wheel so her truck would get back on track. As she did this, I saw that she had one hand on the wheel and one was holding her cell phone up to her ear.

I said to my son, “Look at that lady. She almost went off the road, and I bet she didn’t miss one word of the conversation on her phone.”

I backed off another car length, just in case. As we went further down the road, I was watching the traffic light; it had been green for a while and turned yellow as we were about 10 seconds from it. I watched the car in front of the pickup hit its brakes and slow down for the light that had now turned red. I also noticed that the four-wheel drive truck did not seem to be slowing down. A feeling of impending doom came across me. You know the feeling that you get when you are about to hit something and you have no way of stopping?

All seemed to turn to slow motion as I saw the rear end of the truck lift up from the force of hitting the car in front of it. I heard glass breaking, a blast of air as the front tires of the truck and rear tires of the car blew. I pulled as far left as I could, parked and jumped out to see if I could be of any help.

I ran to the car in front, it had been pushed by the truck into the car in front of it and the airbags had inflated. The lady in the car was OK but very dazed; she did not suffer any serious injuries. I then ran to the truck to check on the lady that had been on the phone. She had airbag dust all over her, and the bag had burned her face. It had all happened so fast that she had not taken the phone from her face and there was a perfect imprint of the phone on her mouth and cheek.

I did not say anything to her about being on the phone; I figured the police would be able to see for themselves. As I stood next to her truck by her door, she realized she had her phone in her hand and started to put it in her center console. It would not open due to the impact so she threw it on the floor along with all the other things that had been thrown from her purse. I could hear someone on the other end of the line say what was that? She grabbed the phone and turned the speaker off and told the person she had just been in an accident and had to go and hung up the phone.

A police officer walked up to us and asked if we were OK. I said I was behind her when it happened and was not hurt at all but he should take a look at her. I told the officer to check her brake lights to see if they worked because they had not came on at all during the crash. After talking to the lady for a few minutes, the officer came to me and asked if I had seen her brake lights at all?

“No, I don’t think she hit them.” I asked him if he had saw the mark shaped like a phone on her face? He said he had and said she told him she was not on the phone. As he started taking pictures he took one of her face and she looked into the door mirror and could see the undeniable mark on her face and decided to tell the truth about being on the phone.

You would think that seeing this in person would cure anyone from using their phone in a car, bus or any kind of vehicle. It’s just not worth the risk, but how many of us are still doing this in our own cars every day, thinking,”It won’t happen to me?” After all the deaths and injuries, you would think a person would be crazy to use their phone in the car.

Unfortunately, it still happens all the time. If I had to count how many of the last dozen or so accidents I have seen were caused by a phone in one way or another, I would say about 80 percent, at least. I hate to admit it, but I myself have been driving to work and have answered and returned texts thinking once again, “It won’t happen to me, my eyes are only off the road for a second.” A life can end in less than a second. I will admit I have had my wife yell at me for looking at my phone when I get a text in the car. I will also admit she threatens to clobber me if I try to text back.

So, even with all this evidence showing how deadly it can be to text or use your phone in a moving car, millions still do it. What will it take to get us to stop? Hopefully not the life of a loved one. Join me as I make a promise to the world not to put lives in danger. You think it could never happen to you, but thousands have said the exact same words as they answered that text. It was the last time they answered anything, ever. A close friend of mine put it perfectly when he said, “Phones are a great tool; let’s not make them a weapon, also.”

Darrel Christie is the assistant manager of student management for Brown Bus Company, a school bus contractor located in Nampa, Idaho.