Stirring the Pot:

Under the Radar

By Jim Ellis | Contributing Editor

The phrase "school transportation" immediately conjures up the image of our beloved "Old Yellow." But not all school transportation actually utilizes an FMVSS school bus or a "school-bus qualified" driver. That this is a safety concern is without dispute. As the NTSB has put it, "When states and various school systems allow children to be transported in vehicles not meeting federal school bus construction standards, the federal intent of protecting school children is undermined."

Of course, the extent of non-yellow school transportation varies widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction depending on state law and local policy. Some types of non-yellow transportation - transit tripper service, non-conforming vans and the use of small non-FMVSS multipurpose vehicles by school-bus qualified drivers - have already been the subject of widespread industry attention in recent years, and I won't revisit those debates here. Instead, I'd like to look at two forms of non-yellow "school transportation" that haven't gotten much discussion: "occasional" transportation provided by a teacher/coach/social worker/nurse/SRO during the school day or to an after-school event and "unofficial" school trips provided by non-yellow charter bus companies.

Occasional Transportation

In my experience, midday transportation provided by non-school bus qualified school staff in non-FMVSS vehicles - for instance, taking home a sick child, a child with head lice or a child suspended from school - is much more extensive than generally recognized. It's going on all day long in larger school districts. Even small districts do it a few times a day. An interesting exercise is to ask school secretaries to keep a log of all such "occasional" midday trips for a month or so.

Some state laws and guidelines make allowances and exemptions for this practice. In other cases it seems to be just a tradition no one's ever looked at. But how qualified are these school employees to transport students? Has their driving record been checked? Do they know what to do if there's a breakdown, an accident or a fire? And what about the overall safety record? Unfortunately, accident data for most forms of non-yellow school transportation is seldom integrated with traditional school bus accident data, so it's hard to know the extent of the problem. All we have are unsettling anecdotal accounts, which may or may not represent the tip of an iceberg.

Even where state law exempts "occasional" drivers from school bus driver training requirements, a prudent school district can still require appropriate training as local policy.

Unofficial Trips

Then there are the "unofficial" school trips, in which a teacher or a group of parents directly contracts with a non-yellow charter company. These trips worry me greatly. Because they're so under the radar, it's hard to know how many trips occur, and like "occasional" midday transportation, it's hard to know how bad the safety record is since the accident data might not be integrated with typical school bus data. But how ironic that in communities in which home-to-school and sanctioned school trips are provided only by highly-trained school bus drivers in scrupulously maintained school buses, students are at the same time routinely subjected to trips in poorly maintained, out of compliance vehicles driven by bus drivers who haven't been properly trained, aren't properly rested, and perhaps have a personal history that argues against interaction with children.

Reputable school bus and coach contractors have a hard time competing on a narrow dollar basis with unscrupulous charter companies who choose to ignore regulatory requirements because the playing field isn't level. In some cases, tiny charter companies register their vehicles in one state and provide service in another to avoid scrutiny and inspection. And if the party (teacher, parent, or even the principal) doing the contracting for the trip isn't savvy about transportation safety requirements, it's easy to be "hornswaggled" by a lowball bid. Some horrendous incidents have occurred when parents didn't know what type of charter service they were paying for.

Below are a list of simple "do's" and "don'ts" for arranging school charter trips. (Thanks to my friend Joe Scesny of the New York State DOT for many of these excellent suggestions.)

Do:

Do require all school-related activity trips, "officially-sanctioned" or not, to be arranged in consultation with the district's transportation department.
Whenever possible, do try to use a local charter company whose reputation you know or can check out beforehand.
Do check your state DOT safety ratings for inspection records before contracting with a charter company. If the company is an interstate carrier, you can check its safety record at http://safer.fmcsa.dot.gov/CompanySnapshot.aspx or http://www.ai.volpe.dot.gov/SafeStat/SafeStatMain.asp
Do have a mechanic check out the charter company's vehicle beforehand. (Some school districts have the company bring the vehicle in a day ahead for a complete inspection.)
Do have the company provide a driving record abstract for all assigned trip drivers ahead of time (and an adequate number of substitutes just in case). Driver privacy laws may require blacking out certain personal information.
Do check the assigned trip driver's driving log for the previous eight days to ensure compliance.
Do carefully evaluate the company's contingency plans for a breakdown along the route or at the destination.

Don't:

Don't rely on a quick internet search of cheapest bus companies without further investigation.
Don't rely on a broker's assurance that a company is legit without checking it out yourself.
Don't allow the charter company you contract with to subcontract the work to an unknown company.

Ellis is the former director of Research & Instructional Design for the Pupil Transportation Safety Institute. He is the current transportation director for Moravia, N.Y., Central School District and can be reached at elsink@adelphia.net.