Being Prepared for the Unexpected

Roll overs, terrorists, natural disasters and weapons — school districts are staying ahead of the curve to keep students safe.

Part 1 of 2

Stephane Babcock | Associate Editor

Emergency situations can come in many forms: a tornado tearing a path through the middle of town, a gun-wielding criminal who sees the yellow bus and decides to use it as a getaway car, or an overturned school bus filled with children who have no idea what to do to get to safety.

Although an ongoing issue for school districts over the years, the safety and security of students has become an especially hot topic of late. As a result, a number of school systems around the country are readying themselves for everything from extreme weather to possible terrorist activity and severe accidents.

A New Take on Bus Evac Drills
One group in Upstate New York has taken an idea from one district and has been working diligently to make it their own.

The School Bus Training Team of Oswego County (SBTTOC) is currently in the process of constructing their Safety Bus, a multi-functional bus that will allow students to practice not only window and roof-hatch evacuation, but to learn how to escape an overturned bus.

“The front half will be upright, and the rear will be on its side,” said Deb Stevens, director of transportation at Sandy Creek Central School District and a member of SBTTOC. “We still need about $16,000 to finish construction. We’re having a Safety Day fundraiser on June 2 to help us finish the bus.”

The group, a formation of bus drivers, transportation directors, bus monitors and everyone else involved with school transportation in the area, formed after Mary Kimball, president of SBTTOC and a 16-year veteran bus driver for Phoenix Central School District, attended the 2006 NYAPT Road-eo.

“The highlight of the event was the unique bus from Owego Appalachian Central School,” said Kimball. “After talking to the safety team of Owego Appalachian, I was convinced my school needs a bus like this.”

After returning home, Kimball started talking with Stevens as well as her transportation director and began searching for a bus, which was eventually donated by New York Bus Sales.

“We felt it would be great to be involved in something like this,” said George Darling, a salesman for New York Bus Sales. “It will benefit the firemen and EMT crews by giving them a bus to train on, an example of the structure of a bus, and the experience on how to get in and out of it. We also cut a door in the bus for them and installed a lift.”

In an effort to keep the students and the community at large ready for emergency situations, the Sandy Creek transportation department holds mass casualty incident drills. This past August, Sandy Creek, in conjunction with the local police and fire departments, re-enacted a situation where a school bus struck a semi carrying hazardous waste.

“Even though it was a drill, there was an adrenaline rush. It’s amazing how much you learn from just on drill. It makes the response time so much quicker,” said Stevens. “At a bus evacuation drill three years ago, students came up with the idea of hooking the lap belts across the aisles and using them as a rope ladder to reach the rear escape door.”

Border Protection
In New Mexico, the threat to student safety sometimes comes disguised as a student.

“We’ve had incidents where adults posing as students get on the bus. I’ve even caught them myself,” said Ray Trejo, transportation director of Deming Public Schools. He oversees the transportation of 450 students that cross the Mexican border each day to attend school in the United States. “These kids were born in an American hospital, making them U.S. citizens, but they reside in Mexico."

Each school day, the students must present their identification at a border check point, then they meet the buses at a staging area a quarter-mile away. Although they are young children, the face the same scrutiny anyone attempting to cross the border experiences.

“Familiarity doesn’t equal innocence,” said Roger Maier, a spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, in nearby El Paso, Texas. “Each student usually takes only a few seconds, but we’ve intercepted kids with dope in their backpacks. We have enough violators that are school kids, so we can’t just wave our hands and let them through.”

Currently, the Deming school district is working with the state transportation director, Gilbert Perea, and Zonar to tighten the security for transporting these students even more.

“We are going to be installing the GPS system and the RFID student ID system in the buses by the end of June,” said Perea. “Eventually we’re going to be installing a biometrics system.”

“Each student will be given a bus pass, and a reader at the bus door would read the card and record the date and time the student boarded the bus. It will also tie into our GPS system and record where the student was picked up,” said Dan Mayer, director of operations at Zonar. “Our goal is that the student just has to be carrying the card, whether in their pocket or their backpack, and not have to present it to the reader.”

“The system has about 48 inches of read range,” said Mike McQuade, director of research and development at Zonar.

After seeing the system up and running, Perea and the others will decide on a target date for the installation of the fingerprint scanners.

“Our initial concern was that the cards can be exchanged, but the biometrics will pick up any false identification,” said Perea.

The inclusion of GPS is a further necessity of the dangers that have come to the forefront since 9/11. Homeland security training used together with the capabilities of GPS add another layer of safety to the 30-mile ride students take into Deming.

“We don’t want to scare them, but they need to know the information. By giving them the information, they’re more confident. The last thing we want to do is bury our heads in the sand,” said Trejo.

Training can come in many different forms from a number of sources. The New Mexico Department of Education several years ago mandated a program created by Ream Lazaro, a trainer and consultant from the firm Lazaro and Noel.

“With kids coming across the border, it makes things more complicated. The primary focus is on outside perpetrators, people who could jump on the bus and take it hostage or violently attack the bus driver or the students,” said Lazaro.

The School Transportation Security Awareness (STSA) program, created by a partnership between the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Consolidated Safety Services (CSS), includes a DVD that shows a simulated bus hijacking.

“The training is vital, incredibly necessary and long overdue,” said Dale Potts, project manager for STSA at the TSA. “The largest fleet of vehicles in the U.S. is school buses and they are virtually unprotected.”

“We train drivers to look for odd behavior, like wearing a heavy coat in the summer, or anything out of sync with the environment,” said Barry DeRoze, industrial program manager for STSA Training at CSS. “Part of the training is to convince school officials that they are part of a larger community network that includes the local police, the emergency response team, parents and so on. It is important because it communicates a sense of community in response to situations of any kind and gives people comfort.”

School Bus Watch, the pupil transportation potion of the American Trucking Association’s Highway Watch program, has trained over 70,000 school bus drivers from over 3,500 separate school bus organizations since its launch two years ago.

“After 9/11, most American industries felt the need to beef up security a bit and the pupil transportation industry is no different,” said spokesperson John Willard. “School Bus Watch was designed to increase awareness in our school bus drivers while simultaneously giving them an outlet to make reports directly to Homeland Security officials if they spot suspicious activity.”