The trade show during the National Conference on Transporting Students with Disabilities and Preschoolers was barely two hours old, and Betsy Shulthess was already counting down the days until she will return next year.
Shulthess, the transportation safety coordinator at St. Charles Community Unit School District 303 in the suburbs of Chicago, said she found extremely valuable workshops on how school districts can partner with businesses on providing transportation services; employ conflict resolution techniques for students, parents and employees alike; and improve working relationships with district administrators. She also said she obtained ideas on how to bring innovation to her school district and to encourage new thought processes to remain on the cutting edge as well as how to better multitask and to re-evaluate district job descriptions.
This, she said, entails "refocusing constantly on where we need to go and what we need to do."
Shulthess learned about the American Logistics scholarship at the 2009 show in Indianapolis, when Chris Thomas, the company's business development manager presented attendees with information on the scholarship and introduced that year's winner, Robin Parks, transportation specialist at Tompkins-Seneca-Tioga BOCES in Ithaca, N.Y. Shulthess' regular work schedule and district budget only allowed her to attend the conference over the weekend, and Thomas' talk to the attendees presented to her an opportunity for 2010.
"I turned to my friend and said, 'You know what? Next year I'm going to be [in Orlando],'" she said. "I realized we had a lot of work to do [at St. Charles], and I was really disappointed I couldn't stay for the whole conference.
When she returned to Illinois, she filled out her application. The rest is history. American Logistic's Thomas contacted Shulthess to inform her she won full conference registration this year as well as round-trip airfare, her hotel stay, transportation to and from the airport, meals, and spending cash. She will also return to the conference in 2011 under the second part of her scholarship, next time as a guest of EduproGroup. Next year's show is scheduled for March 11 through 16 in Kansas City.
Shulthess coordinates the safety and security of the district’s 14,650 school bus riders and 140 bus drivers and assistants. She is responsible for monitoring special education safety requirements for each of the special education buses and supervises the bus evacuation drills for the all of the 17 schools in the district. The disabilities conference, she said, provides the training she needs, not only for herself but to bring back to St. Charles.
"We needed to get our ducks in a row; our district is looking for leaders," she added.