District Administration - July 2007 - (Page 30)

SECURITY who ply the nation’s highways and local roads each day and who could conceivably spot something out of the ordinary. The agency also started a program known as School Transportation Awareness Training. The program was devised in partnership with the three leading school bus organizations. The intent, according to TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis, is to provide bus drivers, administrators and staﬀ members with training and security awareness information that will help them identify, report and respond to perceived security threats. As part of the program, the TSA has distributed to school administrators and employees 400,000 security awareness brochures, Technicians and inspectors sit for a lecture at the National Association of Pupil Transportation’s annual America’s Best Technician/Inspector Competition last year in Georgia. says he does not believe, for example, that the Department of Homeland Security should be responsible for funding GPS systems for school buses. “We funded and purchased the system on our own, based “They haven’t done anything for us. Pilots have steel doors that prevent access. There’s nothing that prevents anyone from getting directly to a driver on a school bus.” —Mike Martin, president, National Association of Pupil Transportation obtain routing and scheduling eﬃciencies, or respond to emergencies and assist drivers. “The 0.1 percent of the time that the system might be used to respond or recover from a ‘terrorist attack’ should not be justiﬁcation for the federal government to provide a signiﬁcant percentage of funding for school districts to purchase GPS systems,” Bair adds. “Basically, the Department of Homeland Security can’t be all things to all people at all times.” Still the Safest Way to Go Terror concerns notwithstanding, evidence establishes the school bus as the nation’s safest form of ground transportation. For that reason, organizations such as the Colorado-based National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services have lobbied for additional funding for school bus transportation to provide more kids with a safe way to get to and from school, says Bob Riley, the association’s executive director. Given the ceaseless scrutiny of school bus safety through the years, it was perhaps inevitable that higher technology would enter the fray. Although GPS units are still a novelty on school buses—Phil Mugg, a former transportation director in Indiana who works today for GPS provider Synovia, estimates that no more than 200 school districts nationwide have installed them—their use is growing. Transportation directors whose districts have installed GPS systems on their buses laud the technology, which enables them to pinpoint a bus’s locaDistrict Administration 300,000 driver tip cards and more than 4,000 DVDs on school bus security. The program has also provided training for 62,000 law enforcement personnel and school transportation employees, including drivers. The 24-minute DVD portrays a simulated school bus hijacking and Web-based training for administrators, drivers and other transportation employees. (The School Transportation Security Awareness program is oﬀered free to any district. Administrators can register for the program through the TSA Web site, www.TSA.gov.) District Responsibility It may be too early to gauge the program’s eﬀectiveness—Goldstein says he wasn’t even aware of it. And not all administrators believe the federal government is responsible for school bus security. William Bair, transportation director of the Colorado Springs School District, 30 July 2007 on what the system could do for us operationally on a day-to-day basis—not based on the ‘terrorist threat,’” Bair says. Most times, the GPS system is helping school systems respond to complaints, American students are nearly 8 times safer riding in a school bus than riding in cars driven by their parents or guardians. School buses average 1 fatality for every 500 million vehicle miles traveled. Source: National Highway Traﬃc Safety Administration, 2002 study http://www.TSA.gov

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - July 2007

Contents
Editor’s Letter
Letters
News Update
Facilities/Construction Update
Curriculum Update
Inside the Law
Administrator Profile
District Profile
Cover Story: Rethinking School Bus Safety
Broadening Collective Bargaining
Searching for Subs
Jersey City’s Broad Appeal
Improving Nutrition in Schools
New Products
Computer Literature
How Well Does This Web Site Work?
Research Corner
Problem Solution
Online Edge
Speaking Out
Supervisor’s Opinion
Calendar of Events
Understanding the Times

District Administration - July 2007