Organizations Combine Efforts to Host First
"School Bus Watch" Anti-Terrorism Training

WARREN, Ohio (8/22/05) - Warren City School District, the Ohio Department of Education's Office of Pupil Transportation, and Community Bus Services, Inc., will present Ohio's first ever "School Bus Watch" training, a school bus driver anti-terrorism and safety program, at 1:30 p.m. on Friday, August 26 at Warren Western Reserve Middle School, located at 202 Loveless SW, in Warren.

The school bus driver training program, entitled "School Bus Watch," was developed by the School Bus Security Task Force in cooperation with Highway Watch, a program funded by the US Department of Homeland Security. The School Bus Security Task Force is a collaborative effort of the National Association for Pupil Transportation, the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services, and the National School Transportation Association. While the state has been working with national sources to develop this program for nearly two years, the recent London terrorist attacks on public transportation underscore the importance and timeliness of this initiative. The program will ultimately be offered to 600,000 school bus driver professionals across the country.

There is room for over 900 school bus drivers to attend this event, which is free of charge. The program will be led by Pete Japikse and Terry Thomas . Japikse, the Ohio Department of Education's Director of Pupil Transportation, serves as President of the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation ( www.nasdpts,org ), while Thomas is CEO of Community Bus Services, Inc., a northeast Ohio school bus company that operates in over 20 school districts in Trumbull, Mahoning and Cuyahoga counties. Thomas is also past-president of the National School Transportation Association ( www.yellowbuses.org ).

Japikse and Thomas both serve on the national panel that has coordinated this effort with the TSA.

"As a result of their daily driving routine, school bus drivers are some of the best sources to notice something out of the ordinary," said Susan T. Zelman, Ohio Superintendent of Public Instruction. "School Bus Watch will give drivers the training they need to assess and report potential threats to the national intelligence community."

Japikse adds, "In Ohio , there are more than 20,000 bus drivers who are responsible for the safe transportation of 80 percent of the state's 1.8 million school children. Before school starts this fall, Ohio will have 20-30 certified instructors in the program and will begin training school bus drivers across the state. There is no charge for School Bus Watch training in Ohio 's school districts, as the cost for the program is being covered by a federal grant."

The School Bus Watch training will provide drivers with background on potential threats to school buses, give drivers a history on terrorism worldwide and outline tips on how to prevent threatening events in the school bus industry. "School bus drivers already play a vital role in the safety and security of their communities," Zelman said. "School Bus Watch will give drivers additional tools that will help keep communities, vehicles and most importantly, children, safe."

Japikse's Office of Pupil Transportation has distributed the Warren City Schools' invitation to participate in the training to every school bus driver in northeast Ohio .

"We have a good start with over 200 school drivers already registered to attend the August 26 training session. With the start of school so near, we are hoping to fill the auditorium with school bus drivers to receive the training and their individual Highway Watch identification number that provides them with official access to report suspicious or threatening activity to the Transportation Security Administration's Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC)," said Thomas.