Taking a Risk to Avoid Risk

Best-laid plans help school districts and transportation departments deal with the inevitable

By Julie Metea

School transportation professionals can’t see every incident on the horizon. But they can certainly arm themselves for uncertainty and stand prepared to deal with whatever comes their way.

In ideal risk management, professionals are developing strategies, processes and training for the highest probability and incidents with the greatest loss. Lower probability of occurrence and lower loss are handled in a descending order of priority.
Good contingency planning also involves alignment across several groups within a school district — transportation, law enforcement, students, parents and businesses. In other words, everyone knows what to do in an emergency.

Risk management also involves the difficult task of allocating precious resources. The goal for planners is minimal spending for maximum reduction of incidents.

“You can’t think that nothing is going to happen,” said Tom Quisenberry, vice president of Patriot Services Corporation, an emergency consultant firm in Waterford, Mich. “You have to make assessments and prepare the best you can.”

Educated Guess for Risk
The range of potential incidents for school districts is staggering. Today’s risk ranges from recently precedented violence, like the incidents at Columbine High School and Virginia Tech, to long-standing threats such as natural disasters, illnesses and accidents.

In almost every incident, school transportation is a critical aspect of an overall emergency plan. Buses take people away from the danger. However, school transportation has its own subset of risk, and school districts are making investments to avoid busing incidents.

“You need strategies, but a critical part is training. You can’t just hire people and begin to drive. Bus drivers can cut down on risks if they know them,” said Quisenberry, who shares best practices derived from the military.

He believes most school bus incidents are triggered by mechanical issues, traffic, road construction and driver error. However, bus drivers see bigger threats.

“I ask drivers what the biggest fear is now, and it’s a stranger getting on the bus. Drivers have to know how to engage, especially since they don’t carry a weapon. We need to show them how to get the students out safely,” he said.

Evolving Risk
Newer contingency plan trends are emerging for incidents inside and outside of school buses. They involve behavioral issues and the “grey area” risk.

The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) is seeing more school transportation professionals sign up for its school crisis prevention and intervention curriculum.

“We take the angle of mental health. Bus drivers don’t often get training from behavior management. From bullying to recognizing children with violent behaviors, there’s potential crisis they could face,” said Katherine Cowan, communications director for NASP.

The program, called PREPARE, focuses on four stages of crisis management — prevention, preparedness, response and recovery. It launched two years ago with the Columbine incident as the impetus. Unlike other emergency planning programs, PREPARE gives participants the tools to recognize and take action against behavior that can lead to disaster.

“Bus drivers are key for noticing, because they see kids twice a day. We teach them how to identify behaviors and victims. They need to know how and where to report that information. Often people see the violence in different settings. Then they can pull together all of the warning signs for intervention,” said Melissa Reeves, who authored the PREPARE curriculum.

More and more, school transportation professionals need to determine risk in “grey areas” and map the boundaries for accountability. One of those areas is the bus stop.

“Are the bus drivers responsible for the street? Or are they only responsible when a child steps on the bus. What if someone is running to the stop and gets hurt. Or bullying when they’re off the bus. Or if parents are not there to pick up the student and you drive off leaving the kid alone. Address these risk factors,” instructed Quisenberry.

Bad Cops for Risk
As some school transportation directors point out, risk management planning doesn’t come easy. Decisions come out of lessons learned or out of disagreement.
In Waterford, Mich., the school district addressed risk by changing employee schedules and property maintenance. The tactics resulted after a rash of bus vandalism that caused the school district to shut down for several days. Vandals slashed tires on 24 buses, which ultimately cost the community $600,000 in wages, maintenance and back-up child care.

“It made us re-assess things. We looked at building security and sensing in the parking lots. We changed procedural things, like closing our gates earlier. Now mechanics work at night and look around to make sure everything is okay,” said Jim Beaver, Waterford’s school transportation director.

At Montgomery County, Md., Public School District, school transportation planners had to decide on the bigger risks of a bus stop.

Parents were concerned about students waiting at a bus stop at the mouth of an upscale subdivision on a busy road that’s used as a cut-through to an interstate highway. The transportation department didn’t want to enter the subdivision, because it was still under construction with streets too narrow to turn the bus around. The district ultimately sided with the transportation department’s recommendation.

“We would have needed to back up the bus at several points, which isn’t safe. It’s a practice not to go into a dead-end neighborhood. We have to do what’s safe and efficient. They wanted a higher level of service and a higher risk option,” said Assistant Transportation Director Todd Watkins, whose department operates 1,265 buses that transport 96,000 students a day.

Training and Tips
Once risk management planners figure out the “what if” strategies, the next big steps are communication and training.

“You can have the best plan in the world, something awesome on paper, but if you don’t practice, it won’t work at the most critical time. Do more than fire drills. Do tornado drills. Lock-down drills. Have crisis team meetings,” said Cheri Clymer, a certified pupil transportation driver instructor at Thompson School District in Loveland, Colo., and co-author of NAPT’s Emergency Preparedness manual.

Clymer’s school district also implements a robust communication program for emergency planning. It involves updates to students, parents and law enforcement. In addition, the plan outlines details for dealing with the media during a crisis.

Back in Waterford, the district invested in a full-scale training day for reducing risk. In December, the district implemented a full evacuation drill at the high school, which included the use of the school bus fleet. The exercise simulated a chemical incident, and it involved all faculty, students, local police and the fire department.

The district obtained emergency planning funds by hiring grant writers to get money from the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Department of Homeland Security. Other federal emergency training can be obtained from School Bus Watch, the free security and safety program administered by the NAPT for the nation’s school bus driver corps.

Security professionals urge transportation directors to do training a few weeks before school starts. Bus roadeo roundups are fun and practical activities for staging, turning and detection.

They also urge schools to administer deeper driver background checks and conduct visual sweeps inside the bus to find suspicious objects or a sleeping child. Technology — such as radios, monitoring and video systems — are additives but not total solutions to security.

“It’s a reality we have to deal with today. We live in a society that you need to make safe, plan and make a priority in business,” said Beaver. n

Metea, a regular STN contributor, is a freelance journalist based outside of Detroit.