Catch 22 in Michigan

State budgets are tight all over. This story out of Michigan is just unbelievable.

Michigan State Police informed school administrators by letter this week that all 11 state school bus inspectors will be laid off as of Oct. 31. Without certification from inspectors, school districts cannot legally operate buses.

Buses can continue to operate only until their inspection sticker runs out. So some buses will be good for almost a year but others will have to stay off the road or run illegally as early as November 2. School districts have been told to seek the advice of their own attorneys. There is mention of a possible amendment to the law making the inspections optional.

So if inspections are optional I would assume most school districts would continue their own bus inspection programs and do all they can to insure the safety of their students. But with school budgets tightening I see an awful temptation on the part of a few to cut corners if no one is looking over their shoulder.

I'm sorry Michigan, this is NOT an area where you should be looking to cut your budget.

Driver Training in Tulare, CA

I ran across this new story today and thought it was great. We weren't the only ones volunteering our time yesterday for bus safety.

A couple of things struck me about the bus they used. No roof hatches and no amber warning lights.

For some reason the embed won't work so try this link.

Safety Expo 2009

I woke up early and immediately checked the radar and the rain/ snow mix was knocking on our doorstep. By the time we started setting up the sun was out in full force, which was great because it was chilly!

Some people couldn't make it at the last minute but others jumped in and filled their slots. We had more kids than last year but I'm still a little disappointed that we didn't have many more.

My policy is not to share pictures of student's faces so my pictures may make it appear that we didn't have a crowd which is not the case, I just have lots of pictures I won't share here.

The first two expos were held at the elementary school. It was great to be able to host it this year at our new facility.

The safety team bus, ambulance company, ladder truck and State Police.

We are lucky that two different fire departments participate. One department brought their off road rescue vehicle which is popular with kids and dads both. Both departments bring hand outs for the kids and the kids get little plastic firemen's helmets.

I'm thinking I can get a couple of more vehicles in there next year. Who can I invite?

The safety team bus simulates what a bus would be like in a roll over.
The Trooper brought lots of stuff to hand out too.

We let the kids ride up and down on the wheel chair lift to see what it is like for kids that have this ride every day.

The smoke bus was just as popular as ever. A member of our staff is also a volunteer firefighter and he does a great job with this and lots of us like to work at this station.

Sparky the Fire Dog was very popular. I had to crop out many faces but picture a large crowd off to the right.

New this year was a bike rodeo and it very popular. That's Nikki taking a turn on the course.

And of course I have to give equal time to Liz.

Here are Alex and Mike playing are you Safer than a 5th grader. One of the mechanics hooked up some old red lights with buttons that make them light so the kids can try to ring in first.

Here are other kids playing the game. We roped off the shop for safety but wanted everyone to have a peek at our new state of the art facility.

We had inside safety displays too. We were lucky to get someone from the power company to volunteer her time and bring this display.

And there was lots of food and drink in our training center so everyone could get a break from the cold.

There were other displays that I don't have pictures of to share. We had one of the huge parking lot plows and the local police out on the loop. A driver and attendant taught safe crossing. We had a table full of health hand outs and one of the building nurses doing blood pressure checks. Transportation staff also manned tables displaying items you can't bring on the bus as well as the very popular face painting. Bean let us borrow her pop corn machine and it ran non-stop.

And as always we ended the day with a drawing for the bikes that had been donated.

This was by far our best year yet. I'll be working on thank-you notes next week and then planning will start for next year. If you have any ideas for displays or activities we could incorporate for next year I'd love to hear them!

Cool Shirts

We don't have an official uniform at work so I tend to wear polo shirts with our school name and either a bus or the school emblem embroidered on them. In the winter I wear sweatshirts. I'm always on the lookout for new shirts and I received a post card from Have a Better Life Today. Since so many drivers are already back to work I thought I'd share the link. I really like their School is great - Bus Drivers make it better. I haven't done business with this company but I will be taking the flier to our refresher on Sept 3.

They have some other cute designs including a couple of Dairy and a Grandparents one.

Training Bus

Before I get to the bus pics I'd like to congratulate Sue of Susan's World for placing 3rd in her local Road-eo! She now gets to compete in the regional competition and I wish her the best of luck. I missed competing the last two years but I'm signed up for this year.

I mentioned in my last post that we had taken the training bus to one of the schools and Edith asked for more information about it. A few of you may remember the earlier pictures and excitement here as the bus was being rebuilt to suit our needs but I really haven't talked much about it in the last year. Since safety training is one of my passions I thought I'd review the history of our bus.

Many years ago we borrowed this bus to teach emergency evacuations to our students. It is owned by a district in another county and always books up fast! Here it was being used at a Safety Fair that I attended. You can see a student being helped out of the roof hatch.
I love this bus because it has railings so drivers and students can actually practice going out the window and roof exits. Being able to do it myself really changed the way I conduct my thrice annual evacuation drills.

Back in 2006 I did very poorly at the regional Road-eo but one of my teammates did well and went on to the state competition. While she was there she saw a bus redesigned to simulate a rollover accident but that could also be used for regular window and roof hatch drills. I don't own a picture of their bus but you can find their pictures here. That district was much too far away to borrow the bus, so she brought back pictures and started talking about building our own. She got drivers together from across the region and we started fund raising. That generated a blog to both thank our sponsors and to update everyone on the progress.

This is what we ended up with. We do not have the safety rails or ladders that the other buses have as the local fire departments expressed an interest in being able to use the bus to train their personnel.


Here you can see the roof hatch on it's side. Right now we use the bus simply to show students what the bus will look like inside if there is a roll over and get them thinking about where they'd end up and what they would need to do to get out. It also allows us to get a dialog going with them about overall bus safety while we really have their attention.

We have mats that we can use but we're still working out how to allow the kids to use the exits without anyone getting hurt. The bus is available for use by any school district in the area.

We also use our everyday rides to teach safety to the kids and their parents. At our annual safety expo in October I do a mirror demonstration where I put the parents in the drivers seat with the kids behind them and ask them what they can see in the mirrors. They are always surprised by how little they can see inside the bus. Meanwhile I have items that a child might drop near the bus scattered around outside along with a car parked up tight to the rear bumper. We also usually have someone teaching safe crossing, we bring a wheel chair bus and chair and one of our volunteer firefighters runs a smoke bus which you see below. That's Mike (a couple of years ago) learning to sit and slide as he goes out the rear door.


I'm looking for ideas that we can use to create another hands on learning experience at our next expo in October and I'd love to hear any ideas you may have!

And if you're curious as to how the bus was cut and flipped, here is the slide show I created back then.

Trick or Treat!

Today was definitely a TREAT! It was very cold and frosty but the sun was out for out 2nd annual Safety Expo. Everything went great, my coworkers are the best! But, boy am I tired. All six of my grandkids were there and they had a great time!

How I Spent My Day Off

As coordinator our 1st big Safety Expo I have been a tad stressed the last month. We had six bikes, a huge box full of bags of candy, pumpkins, home made cup cakes & brownies and other little things donated to give away. I had volunteers all lined up to do face painting, man four buses and other various displays. Some of these volunteers were from a neighboring district that work with us on the Training Team and that bus was coming too. The local boy scouts were coming to help and we were expecting two fire departments, an ambulance and a snowplow. At the end of the day yesterday a small monkey wrench was thrown into our plans. Waking up to pouring rain was incredibly depressing.

This is how things looked as we were setting up.
Would anybody come on such a dreary day?

Turn out exceeded my expectations for a sunny day!
The rain let up and eventually stopped altogether.

The wheel chair bus was a huge hit. The kids
learned what it would be like to be in a wheelchair
and they got to see what a little bus looks like inside.

The smoke bus was also hugely popular. They use
a machine that generates a non-toxic white "smoke".

The kids learned how little they'd be able to see
if their bus was involved in a fire and why they
need to know where the exits are ahead of time.

Here's Mike evacuating out the back.
Doesn't he look tiny on the bumper?
We also taught the kids that they need to sit
and slide rather than jump.

The monkey wrench I mentioned?
The band was having their big show and the visiting
bands needed to warm up and practice at our location.
Things worked out and we ended up with extra
entertainment as a bonus!

The kids loved see the big plow and and all of the
firetrucks. They brought one more truck than I
expected which was great. They talked to the kids
about safety and let them climb all over their trucks.They
also let them play with the air horns so things were
a bit loud for awhile between the bands and the horns!

I was very excited to see the Training Team bus.
This was the first time I'd seen it since it was repainted.

It turned more than a few heads,
especially those from the visiting bands
that didn't know about it.

Here are Mike and Alex looking out the roof
hatch with Sparky the Fire Dog.

Nikki and Liz were there too.
Weren't their costumes great!
I didn't recognize Nikki when she 1st came up to me.

Of course there some glitches. We had to send out for more candy because turn-out was so much higher than expected. There were some things we will do differently next year. Many things went perfectly. We have lots of ideas and I'm certain that this will become an annual event!

Emergency Drill

We had a sun-shower and beautiful rainbow at my second school this morning. The kids weren't nearly as thrilled as I was. Of course I didn't have to get out in the rain. :-)

By law in NY we have to have our first evacuation drill within the first five days of school. My drills didn't go well yesterday. The older group got out very quickly but fully half of them refused to sit and slide opting instead for squat 'n hop. I was very lucky that nobody twisted an ankle. My new bus sits much higher than any other bus I've had. I had one new kid respond to a couple of my questions with "Who cares?" The second time he yelled, I calmly told him that I care and that if I have to turn off the radio and give daily safety talks to make him care too, I will. The other kids quickly shut him up for me.

With the little ones I only covered how to get out the back door. It took them way too long to get out. (I need to be able to clear the bus in well under two minutes, it took them three.) Even though I only had six kindergarteners, I have quite a few new kids. I think after they start doing the daily front door drill they will do better at just following each other and not bunching up in the aisle. In a couple of weeks I'll try to get permission and the help I'll need to run the drill again. Meanwhile I have lots of stuff to cover with them and only about five minutes a day so we'll go over a little bit at a time.

If you have a child that rides a school bus do they know how many emergency doors their bus has, where they are located and how to open them? Most kids will not count the front door as an emergency exit but that is the preferred exit if it is available! Ask your child if they know how to open the doors. The door at the back and the one(s) in the middle have a red handle that pulls up, you push the door open as far as it will go and on most newer buses the door will lock in the open position. What most kids can't tell you is how to open the front door. If their bus as a manual door they may tell you that you push the button and swing the door arm out. It isn't a button, it's a thumb rest. They have to pull up on the hand-hold and then swing it out. If their bus has an air door they will probably tell you that there is a switch next to the driver and there is. But they may not be able to reach it or it may not be working. They need to know where the air release valve is and it is in different places on different style buses. If they don't know tell them to ask their driver! The pictures below are of just a few of the dozens of styles of buses in use across the country.

Typical side door exit.

Rear door. On some transit style buses there is a large emergency window instead because of the rear engine.

Manual door control

The next 3 are all emergency relief valves. All are located in different spots. Varies for different model years and manufacturers.