According to School Transportation News, there have been 14 accidents near school bus stops in 2018 - with five of the accidents occurring in November alone! Of those accidents, eight resulted in student fatalities - tying the number of deaths in 2017. In every case, the accident would have been preventable.

Do your bus drivers feel well-supported by management and other employees of your school district? With the school bus driver shortage still causing problems, this is an important question! A district needs to maintain awareness of their drivers' morale. Otherwise, they could be easily poached by other districts, or decide to move into other areas of commercial driving work.

Here are a few ways your district can support your bus drivers and ensure their morale remains high.

When it comes to school bus safety, there's a tendency to focus on features that provide physical safety - and understandably enough. However, security is also a major element in bus safety, and should not be overlooked. Fortunately, companies involved in school bus technology know this, and have been putting new solutions on the market that help improve awareness and oversight of a bus fleet.

The right technological investments can help you prevent unwanted guests on your bus, keep track of your buses and riders, and keep your fleet secure when it's not in use. These are some of our favorites.

If a school district is looking to expand their bus fleet without breaking their transportation budget, buying used school buses would be an easy way to do it - at least in theory. School buses don't hold onto their value very well, so it's relatively easy to find used buses which cost a fraction of what a new bus would.

First days of school are often hard on the children, but it seems like it's becoming common for that first day to be hard on the parents as well. In this age of "helicopter parenting" it can be difficult for parents to wave goodbye to their children as they board the bus for the first time. Some parents may even resist using school bus transportation systems, specifically because they don't want to let anyone else drive their child.

Your bus routes will run a lot more smoothly if you can help parents become more comfortable with the idea of bus rides. Here are a few tips on how to ease parents' fears.

The numbers are a bit fuzzy, but somewhere between 1-2% of students are diagnosed as having Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), a developmental disorder that creates social and communicative impairments. Autistic students can be difficult to deal with - particularly for those who aren't trained in working with them.

Many school districts looking to improve their school bus safety are starting to turn to seat belts as one potential answer. However, the debate over school bus seat belts is surprisingly complicated. Plus, in any case, retrofitting an entire bus fleet with belts on every seat is a very expensive proposition.

Without wading into the question of whether school bus belts will actually save lives, we've got some suggestions for more cost-effective alternatives to improve school bus safety.

School buses are extremely expensive, and represent a huge investment for any school district which has purchased a fleet. It's entirely understandable that a district would want to get the most possible use out of their buses. However, nothing escapes the ravages of time, and at some point any school bus will outlive its usefulness.

Pitching a major fleet upgrade can be an uphill battle, but sometimes it's simply necessary. Or, at least, the cost-benefit analysis points towards old buses being too much of a liability. Here are some big warning signs that those older buses should probably be replaced.

When it comes to the costs of a school bus fleet, fuel is usually the number one line item - but school bus maintenance costs are rarely far behind. Buses can be expensive to maintain but, of course, it's absolutely necessary to keep the buses running safely and on schedule.

Maintenance costs will always be needed, but they can often be reduced. Here are some tips for getting your ongoing costs-of-ownership as low as possible.

As things stand, there are a lot of arguments in favor of embracing a school bus tracking system, and very few reasons not to. Tracking your school buses on the road gives you much better insight into your bus operations, provides plenty of data to help lower your on-road costs and, of course, substantially improves school bus safety.

Bus tracking is an investment into your fleet that easily justifies the expense, and will quickly pay for itself through lowered costs.