Super Day

We had a Superintendent's Conference day today. Since it was district wide there was no room for us in any of the school buildings so we backed out several buses and set up some old school cast-off cafeteria tables in the garage for our training session. Usually we freeze but the weather cooperated today and it really wasn't too bad. The new garage is supposed to have a large meeting room / break-room. I hope construction starts on time in April.

The state's required training this year is a course on bullying. This would normally be covered at our mandated January training but management thought it prudent to discuss adult bullying at this time followed by a threat to close down our break-room. I hope certain people were paying attention. I tend to avoid the break-room but it would be nice with winter coming to be able to go in there and warm up in the morning while my bus is warming up.

Somehow, without ever raising my hand I ended up on the labor/management committee. I guess if you gripe you get drafted. I'm concerned that I'll spend several hours of volunteer time to accomplish very little but if we can finally effect some changes that are way overdue the hours will all be worth it.

I did actually volunteer to join the County Safety Committee. We're building a specially equipped bus to use to teach bus safety. It will be available to all the districts in the County and possibly to others region wide. This project is very important to me. Besides getting the bus funded and built we will need to develop specific training programs for different age groups and this is something I've always wanted to do. Generally these types of training programs are developed by SBDI's and Master Instructors and I don't see myself ever reaching that level if I stay at my current district; I'm still trying to get my boss to pay for 19A training and I'm frustrated enough that if I don't get the training this winter I'll probably pay the $400 myself and take the course next summer.

Our session finished with us sitting on a bus as the fire department used their smoke machine to fill it up. I was surprised at how little we could see, not even the red lights marking the emergency exits. I will be sharing what I learned with my kids next week.