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NTSB Calls for School Bus Fire Suppression Systems

In December of 2017, a truly horrific school bus accident occurred in Oakland, Iowa. A fire broke out in the engine compartment of a bus, sending dangerous fumes into the bus interior, and ultimately taking the lives of both the driver and a 16-year-old st..

DERA School Bus Rebates Program Applications Accepted

School Bus Driver Training: Working With Special Needs Students

Last month, a potentially very dangerous mistake occurred in Waterloo, Iowa: A school bus driver mistakenly dropped off an autistic girl at the wrong location. Unsupervised, she wandered more than a mile away and was found at a local Target. Fortunately, s..

Study Claims School Bus Emissions Influence Learning

There is ample evidence that the sort of emissions and pollution created by gasoline and diesel vehicles - like school buses - can cause significant health problems among people exposed to the emissions. What has been harder to demonstrate is whether or no..

School Bus Safety Legislation Considered by Congress

On May 17, 2018, a horrific collision occurred between a school bus and a dump truck on a New Jersey highway. It left two dead, including 10-year-old Miranda Vargas, as well as injuring everyone on the bus as well as the driver of the dump truck. Video foo..

Florida School Bus Drivers Now Required to Have First Aid Training

Any time a child dies on-board a school bus, it's a tragedy - but it's particularly tragic when the death would have been preventable. That is the case in the death of Terissa Gautney on Feb 28, 2018, on a school bus in Bartow, Florida. Terissa was a speci..

School District Settles After Biracial Student Dragged by School Bus

Most of the time, when a bus driver does something that endangers students, it's due to poor judgement. Occasionally, however, it can be malicious - as we saw earlier this year in Farmington, Utah. In a deeply disturbing incident, a 14-year-old biracial ch..

Improving Route Optimization: Review and Insights

Maintaining a school bus fleet is one of the single most costly items in a district's budget, but it's one which is absolutely necessary. Schools must run buses and must provide transportation to any families who ask for it. This places a big burden on sch..

School Bus Driver Shortage: Indiana District Turns to Teachers

School districts around the nation continue to suffer from the school bus driver shortage, with no relief in sight. It may even be getting worse. In a recent online poll of School Transportation News readers, an astounding eighty-four percent of districts ..

Retraining School Bus Drivers: Four Tips

All school bus drivers will spend plenty of time in training sessions throughout their career, with much of it mandated by local or state laws. However, sometimes you may have one or more drivers who need more intensive retraining to get them back on track..

Maine Passes School Bus Stop Arm Camera Bill

On June 17, 2019, Maine Governor Janet Mills signed Senate Bill 166 into law - fully legalizing the use of school bus stop arm cameras across the state. As with similar laws in other states, these cameras can be used to identify and penalize motorists who ..

Are School Buses Safe Enough?

Concerns about school bus safety are frequently a matter of intense discussion, particularly in the wake of a notable accident involving a school bus on the road. Everyone talks about wanting to make school buses safer, and understandably enough. Every chi..

5 Reasons You Need a School Bus Tracking App

How much oversight do you have over your buses, while they're on the road? If one suddenly came to an unexpected stop or deviated from its route without warning, how long would it take you to know? For too many districts, the answer would be "a long time."..

Atlanta-Area School Districts to Benefit From Propane Bus Grant

The push to move school bus fleets away from traditional gasoline and diesel is stronger than ever, and it's being championed by many major groups - including the Environmental Protection Agency. As part of the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act (DERA), the EP..

How School Bus Drivers Can Encourage Reading And Studying On The Route

Like many people, we were charmed by the recent Motherly article making the rounds about an Arkansas bus driver encouraging reading on her bus. If you missed it, a bus driver and special ed teacher named Julie Callison keeps a bucket full of books on her b..

School Bus Drivers Must Constantly Adapt to Changing Weather

While politicians may still argue over the impact of global climate change, few people on the ground still seriously doubt that climate change is real - and it's causing a lot of unpredictable weather. School districts and school bus drivers need to be pre..

3 School Bus Bills Signed by New Jersey Governor

In May 2018, New Jersey suffered a truly terrible school bus transportation accident. A school bus on a field trip collided with a dump truck, resulting in the deaths of a student and a twenty-year veteran teacher, as well as putting 43 others in the hospi..

School Bus Passing Legislation Amended in Georgia

In general, school bus safety laws across the nation have been increasingly strict and concerned with protecting child riders from other motorists - except for one strange anomaly last year. In July 2018, the state of Georgia amended its school bus passing..

How Would Your School Bus Drivers Respond If A Fire Broke Out?

On January 31, 2019, a driver in Tamarac, Florida, had to deal with one of the nightmare scenarios most school bus drivers hope they never have to handle - a fire onboard the bus. For reasons still under investigation, black smoke started coming out of the..

School Bus Transportation: Plans for Volkswagen Funding

In 2015, it was revealed that German car maker Volkswagen - along with all their associated subsidiaries - had been engaging in widespread fraud to cheat results of emissions testing on many of their vehicles. Ultimately, VW had been cheating going back to..

School Bus Safety: Preventing Onboard Fires

There are many aspects of school bus safety that a district transportation manager must oversee, but one of the most critical is implementing measures to prevent onboard fires. Fires on school buses are more common than people realize. In fact, the DOT est..

School Bus News: New Standard on NOx Emissions Proposed

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently made a significant announcement that may impact anyone attempting to manage a school bus fleet: They will be updating their standards on nitrous oxide (NOx) emissions from heavy engines, for the first time..

3 Reasons to Reduce School Bus Idling

When managing a school bus transportation network, there are a lot of factors to keep track of, and sometimes it's easy to let the little things slip by. However, in the case of school bus idling, it's a little thing that adds up to big problems! Your driv..

Threats Require Increased School Bus Security

In recent years, school districts around the country have had to improve security in response to ever more shootings, violence, and even terrorist activity. It's a dangerous world, and schools have to be prepared. However, all too often a district will foc..

The Future Of School Bus Transportation: Raising the Safety Bar

When it comes to running a school bus transportation system, nothing is more important than protecting the precious cargo onboard each bus. For a long time, transportation administrators had limited options for improving bus safety, but in recent years we'..

Will Propane Lead the School Bus Industry?

In a recent webinar, the President of ROUSH CleanTech, Todd Mouw, made a bold proclamation: "Propane [in school buses] is going to be the lead horse for the next decade," referring to its status as the most commonly used alt fuel. ROUSH CleanTech provides ..

Studies Reveal Added Benefits of School Bus Seat Belts

Are school bus seat belts a feature that would save lives, or are they more trouble than they're worth? For decades, the conventional wisdom was the latter: Buses are already so safe that any benefits added by belts would be minimal, and counterbalanced wi..

What's Behind Fatalities at School Bus Stops?

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 ..

Six Ways to Support Your School Bus Drivers

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. O..

Four Ways to Use School Bus Technology for Security

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 ..

Should Your District Buy Used School Buses?

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..

Four Ways to Make Parents Comfortable With School Bus Transportation

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 the..

School Bus Transportation: Calming Autistic Students

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 - partic..

School Bus Safety: More Than Just Seat Belts

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 wit..

Four Reasons to Replace Aging School Buses

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..

School Bus Maintenance: Controlling Costs

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 safe..

Five Must-Have Fleet Tracking Features

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 lo..

School Bus Drivers: New FMCSA Diabetes Rule

Insulin-dependent diabetics got a big piece of good news this month: Thanks to a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) rule change, it is now much easier for them to receive commercial interstate driver's licenses.

Five Best Practices for Hiring School Bus Drivers

Are you having much luck hiring new school bus drivers? If you're like many districts around the country, this is a constant source of frustration. The bus driver shortage shows no signs of abating, with some outlets even referring to it as "the new norm."..

Environmental Benefits of School Bus Transportation

Is yellow the new green? It would be if more people knew the environmental benefits of school bus transportation! School buses bring numerous benefits to a community, but all too often, the environmental aspects are overlooked. Buses can genuinely help red..

NHTSA Video Asks Drivers to Stop for School Buses

There is no doubt that nearby drivers are one of the biggest dangers to students riding school buses. Every year, cars ignoring bus safety lights and stop arms endanger, injure, or even kill student riders. This is a problem that should be preventable, if ..

Dealing With School Bus Trespassing

Sometimes it seems like people do things that we shouldn't need to say are completely inappropriate...like trespassing on school buses. Unfortunately, it happens. In fact, in recent months there have been several high-profile cases of unauthorized individu..

NHTSA to Study the Effect of Seat Belts on Student Behavior

When it comes to school transportation safety, few issues have been more contentious than the matter of school bus seat belts. Do they do more good than harm? Do the benefits outweigh the costs? For much of the 20th Century, the general conclusion was “No...

Creating a School Bus Maintenance Policy: Five Tips

One might say that there are three "pillars" of a safe and successful school bus transportation system. You need great drivers, as well as safety-minded riders. However, what can occasionally be overlooked is the importance of maintenance. A bus is only as..

Managing Increasingly Complex School Bus Systems

When a school district is growing, it can be difficult for their transportation system to keep up. Beyond the basic logistical challenge of procuring (or outsourcing) more buses and finding drivers for them, there will also be significant new back office c..

Bus Driver Stops Diagonally To Prevent Stop Arm Violations

All school bus drivers, at some time or another, have been frustrated by motorists ignoring the stop arm and endangering students near the bus. Stop-arm violations are one of the single biggest dangers to students during a school day, and there's relativel..

Making Sense of School Bus Crash Statistics

"Is it safe?" Every parent asks this on a nearly daily basis, and understandably so. Parents need to be reassured that their child will be protected when out of their care, such as when riding the school bus. Since any school bus crash tends to make big he..

Are You Educating Parents On The Benefits Of Riding The School Bus?

Have you reminded your district's parents and guardians about why riding the school bus is important? School buses have been part of American school life even before the invention of the motor engine, with the earliest "buses" being horse-drawn. It's easy ..

Is It Time To Upgrade The Radios In Your School Bus Fleet?

There has recently been a boom in technology designed for the school bus fleet, and that creates an interesting problem for district transportation managers. On one hand, you have so many new options for improving the safety and functionality of your fleet..

School Bus Fleet: Are Low Rolling Resistance Tires A Good Choice?

Now, more than ever, school bus fleet managers are under pressure to find ways to lower the operating costs of their buses. Fuel costs are always a target, as they usually comprise one of the single largest line items in any bus fleet's budget. So, if a di..

Why Does It Matter How Kids Get to School?

One question a school district often hears from community members is, "Why does it matter how kids get to school?" From what we've seen, this seems especially common among people without children of their own, objecting to the idea of paying for school bus..

Safe Fleet to Offer Perimeter Safety Solutions in 2019

There is no doubt that the most dangerous time for any student riding the bus is when they are getting on and off the bus. The entire perimeter around the bus has been dubbed the "danger zone" due to how exposed students are. So, one major focus of school ..

Six Must-Haves for School Bus Routing

One of the most important aspects of being a school bus transportation coordinator is also one of the most difficult: school bus routing. Creating proper routes for the school buses is absolutely essential for the semester to run smoothly, but it takes a l..

Train Drivers To Connect With Special Needs Students On The School Bus

Are your bus drivers doing everything they can to look after any special needs students riding the school bus? Of course, every student on a school bus deserves care and respect, but special needs students need a bit more care. It's vitally important that ..

How to Choose the Right School Bus Routing System

More and more districts are discovering the benefits of embracing a school bus routing system. The right software can radically optimize your routes, while requiring only a fraction of the time needed to create bus routes by hand. They can even offer ongoi..

Study Released on New York School Bus Delays

Managing buses and routes in any city can be a major challenge, but it's hard to even imagine the difficulties involved in planning school bus transportation in New York City. And there have been plenty of challenges! In the past year, parents across the f..

Four Major Benefits of Video Cameras On School Buses

It seems like school districts are now being continually bombarded with new ideas and technologies for improving school bus safety. With so much technical innovation happening across the transportation industry, it's inevitable that many of these new techn..

School Bus News: Student Rides Bus With Cannabis-Derived Medications

A genuinely unique case involving a student riding the school bus recently happened in California, and it could mean districts across the country will have to re-evaluate some of their policies.

Holiday Time: 4 Ways to Show Appreciation for School Bus Drivers

All too often, being a bus driver can feel like a thankless job. School bus drivers have to work genuinely inconvenient hours, and spend most of their time on the job getting yelled at by their passengers, district parents, or both. Not to mention the stre..

School Bus Routing: From Hard Copy to Digital

If a school district were looking for a single piece of software which would do the most to streamline its operations and potentially cut costs, school bus routing software is easily one of the best options. It's an affordable all-in-one package that will ..

School Bus Video Aids Accused Driver

On Tuesday, September 4, 2018, the West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, police department received a disturbing complaint. Two middle school girls were alleging that their school bus driver had committed "inappropriate actions" towards them, which were implied to b..

West Virginia Requires Supervision at School Bus Stops

Various states are always trying new experiments in how to improve school bus safety, but a recent initiative in West Virginia has been raising eyebrows. According to their new Policy 4336 (PDF), all children in grades K-3 must be "supervised" at bus stops..

School Bus Transportation: Back-to-School Safety Checklist

It's back-to-school time, and that means preparing students for their new year at school. There's a lot of information to convey - all of it important - but very little is more important than ensuring safe usage of your school bus transportation system. An..

Five Tips for Ensuring School Bus Passenger Safety

As we start the new school year, one of the most important issues on the mind of every transportation director should be school bus safety. Even though school buses are already by far the safest vehicles on the road, they can always be made safer. We've ma..

Best Practices for School Bus Security and Surveillance

For many districts, onboard video camera systems represent an excellent solution to many school bus security issues. With video cameras, you can keep a close eye on the behavior of students and drivers, while always having footage available if there are di..

Can New Diesel Engines Improve School Bus Health and ROI?

It wasn't long ago that "diesel" was a dirty word when talking about fuels. However, diesel has come a long way since then. Modern diesel engines, backed by technologies to clean the fuel and prevent harmful emissions, are making a major comeback in many a..

Are School Bus Industry Trade Shows Worth It?

As a school district transportation manager you always have a lot on your plate, but that shouldn't stop you from taking time for personal development and networking. There are several major school bus trade shows around the country every year, and they ar..

Better School Bus Routing Becomes Easy With Software

There are many difficult jobs associated with being the transportation director of a school district, but perhaps none are as difficult - in terms of labor - than laying out school bus routes. Doing school bus routing by hand is a time-consuming and tediou..

School Bus Safety: Are Lights Enough?

Recently, we came across an interesting School Bus Fleet article about a petition proposing a change to school bus lighting systems that, according to the petitioner, would improve school bus safety. It's far from the first time such an idea was proposed. ..

How Safe Is Student Bus Transportation?

Student bus transportation safety is an all-important topic, and one which tends to become controversial whenever there's any sort of incident involving a bus accident. The tendency of the media to blow up any accident can often overshadow how incredibly s..

Reducing School Bus Transportation Technology Complexity: Four Tips

When adopting new technology in your school bus transportation processes, there's always the promise that it will help simplify your administrative life and streamline operations. In many cases, this is true. However, problems can arise when a district ado..

What You Need To Know About the Ohio School Bus Lap/Shoulder Belts Bill

For decades, one of the most controversial subjects involving school bus safety was the matter of seat belts: Should school bus seat belts be mandated? The debate has been reignited this summer with the introduction of Ohio House Bill 680 on May 22, 2018. ..

New York School Buses Bring Hybrids Back

For the past decade, many school districts have shown increasing interest in switching to alternative fuel systems. On paper, the benefits are clear: they’d see lower fuel prices and easier maintenance while also reducing the harm their fleet does to the e..

School Bus Drivers: Tornado Preparedness

5 School Bus Trends for the 2018-2019 School Year

These are exciting times for those in the school transportation industry! There has been so much innovation in the world of vehicles, particularly when it comes to integrating computer technology into existing systems. It may take a little while for new id..

School Bus Maintenance: Considering Emissions

If you are investigating the possibility of upgrading your bus fleet to use alternative fuel systems, you have a lot of choices. Green fuels can potentially lower the emissions of your school buses, which in turn can reduce school bus maintenance costs; bu..

Will Self-Driving School Buses Ever Be Practical?

It's impossible to follow technology news without hearing the words "self-driving" on an almost daily basis. Both vehicle and technology groups around the world are racing to have the first street-ready autonomous vehicles in every field of motoring imagin..

Preparing Children to Ride the School Bus

Will your incoming 2018-19 students be ready for their first bus rides? Summer is the perfect time to help parents prepare their children! There's probably no more challenging time for a school bus transportation director than the first week of classes. St..

School Bus Loading and Unloading: Improving Safety In The Danger Zone

Few aspects of school bus loading and unloading are more dangerous than the appropriately-named “danger zone.” The danger zone includes areas near the bus where a student cannot be directly seen by the bus driver, and where incidents involving other vehicl..

Making the Case for Student Transportation Technology

There are more ways to use technology to upgrade your student transportation services than ever before, and they can provide great ROI in terms of efficiency or other cost-savings. However, most technology upgrades still require an up-front investment, and..

Student Bus Transportation: Considering Bell Times

It’s well known that student bus transportation costs are a huge part of a school district’s budget and a truly unavoidable expense. It’s only natural for school districts to look for ways to minimize the costs. Now, some districts are beginning to design ..

School Bus Drivers: Protecting Disabled Students From Bullying

Bullying is a hot topic at the moment, with many seeing the proliferation of bullying as one of the biggest problems in modern school districts. Administrators are under pressure to cut down on bullying and, in particular, shield disabled students from att..

Transportation Management: Tips for Managing Your School Bus Fleet

Overcoming the Challenges of School Bus Fleet Management

Top Tech for Student Bus Transportation

We're living in an age of nonstop technological progress and innovation in all areas of life, and that includes student bus transportation. New school bus technologies are arriving every year, and while not all will become widely adopted, each offers new o..

Looking at Four Choices in School Bus Fuels

Is your district starting to think about alternative school bus fuels? They’re becoming more common, and an increasing number of major bus manufacturers are pushing their alt-fuel designs. Plus, states such as Texas are now beginning to offer rebates and o..

School Bus Safety: Making Loading and Unloading Safer

It’s generally agreed that loading and unloading are the most dangerous times for a child riding a school bus. In fact, the loading and unloading area is even occasionally referred to “the danger zone” because of how many problems could potentially occur. ..

Four Ways to Communicate School Bus Route Changes

When it comes to drawing up bus routes, most districts try to do it at the beginning of the school year and stick with it. Sometimes that’s just not possible, and circumstances beyond their control dictate that routes may have to be re-planned during the s..

Texas Pushes Alternative School Bus Fuels: The Clean School Bus Program

The topic of school bus fuels and the environmental harm done by bus fleets is being treated with increasing concern. With the majority of school buses on the road still being powered by diesel engines, they’re responsible for a lot of pollution. Many dist..

Extra Red Lights to Reduce Illegal School Bus Passing

Without a doubt, one of the biggest threats to the safety of students riding school buses is other drivers. Illegal school bus passing is a huge problem nationwide. Ongoing studies in recent years have suggested that it happens tens of thousands of times e..

School Bus Safety News: California May Delay Child Reminder Alarms

One morning in 2015 a nonverbal, autistic high school student named Paul Lee was left behind on his Whittier, CA, school bus. Eight hours later, in temperatures approaching 100 degrees, he was dead – not discovered until it was time for the bus’s afternoon..

New RE Series School Bus in Production Offers Improvements In Performance And Safety

The RE Series school buses from IC Bus are already a popular solution for student bus transportation, but they’re about to get significantly better. IC Bus has just announced their newest Type D buses, already going into general production, and they offer ..

New York May Levy Steeper Stop-Arm Fines - But Is That The Right Approach?

When drivers endanger school bus riders thousands of times every day by ignoring stop-arm signals, it’s clearly a problem that needs solving. But how? One of the more common solutions being adopted is the use of stop-arm cameras, which work in roughly the ..

Bonuses to Attract School Bus Drivers: 5 Tips

The current school bus driver shortage shows no signs of abating. In fact, if more states follow Tennessee's lead and start imposing stricter requirements on school bus drivers, that could actually make the recruitment-and-retention problem worse. It's a d..

Fixing Holes in School Bus Safety

Staying on top of school bus safety is a never-ending challenge for any district transportation coordinator. There are plenty of ways that a school bus and its routes can be made safer, and never quite enough time to address them all. Undoubtedly, any bus ..

More Stringent Requirements for TN School Bus Drivers

On November 21, 2016, a true tragedy occurred in Tennessee. A 24-year-old school bus driver with a history of speeding was involved in a school bus crash that killed six students and injured over a dozen more. In response, the state of Tennessee enacted Ho..

Intelligent School Bus Seating - The Future Of School Bus Safety?

In a perfect world, cost wouldn't be an issue when it comes to school bus safety. School buses would be outfitted with the latest in safety features to ensure the highest possible rates of safety and accident survivability. Unfortunately, that’s not the re..

School Bus Safety: Solving the Stranded-Student Problem

If you follow school bus safety news at all, it’s hard to avoid headlines about students being accidentally left behind on buses. It happens several times a year, at a minimum, and always causes concern. Sometimes the police are involved. Sometimes, career..

School Bus Tracking Can Bring Peace of Mind to Parents

Everyone says, “Think of the children!” when it comes to school bus tracking, but perhaps we should be saying, “Think of the parents!” instead. Discussions about bus tracking tend to revolve around the many safety benefits that tracking brings to students,..

Ramping Up Accessibility With Low-Floor School Buses

School bus accessibility is a major concern among school districts who find themselves with one or more mobility-impaired students. Legally, in nearly all cases, they are required to provide necessary accommodations for riding the bus. But, those accommoda..

GPS Trackers Versus Bluetooth Trackers: The Major Differences

There’s a lot of new high-tech devices being used in schools, and it’s easy to get confused about what they do, particularly when they seem to be similar products. So it’s not surprising that we get a lot of questions about GPS trackers versus Bluetooth tr..