Bus drivers among safest in Southeast
BY PAM BRANNON Gulf Breeze News news@gulfbreezenews.com

Franklin Hayes/Gulf Breeze News Santa Rosa School District officials are preparing for the first day of school on Aug. 20.

Santa Rosa County School bus drivers are some of the safest in the nation. That's what Laidlaw Branch Manager Bobbie Williams reported to the school board last week. Laidlaw is the national contractor providing buses and hiring bus drivers locally for the school district.

Williams said he had just returned from a meeting in Slidell, La. with other Laidlaw transportation groups from the Southeast and Santa Rosa County's Laidlaw branch received two awards -- one for being the safest large branch along the southeastern seaboard, all the way to Texas, with the least number of accidents per million miles driven; and the second award for the best maintenance department.

"Until April and May this year, our branch was the safest among all branches, large and small, in that southeastern area. Our drivers in this school district drive about four million miles a school year, and that is a lot of miles. We averaged .03 accidents per million miles, and that is great," Williams said.

Williams and the school district's transportation director Joey Harrell gave a report to school board members on the status of school bus routes and drivers for the new school year. Things are in place and ready, with all bus routes complete and available at the transportation office. They will soon be available for print, also.

As of this week, Williams said the district has 306 drivers to cover 254 routes from north to south. That means, Williams said, there is a good 'bench' of substitute drivers in place. Dry runs on routes were done the week after school was out in May, but new dry runs will be done Aug. 15. "We understand that things change over the summer," Williams said. "There are some new routes, and some new drivers, so we will run the routes just before school starts again. Then each driver will have a checklist and sign off on the route, saying they have run it and there are no problems. Of course, we can't account for first day problems, like kids not being on time at the stops and such. But dry runs help take care of a lot of the problems."

Harrell said after the dry runs in May, some routes were changed if drivers found problems with meeting the schedule on time.

There will also be driver meetings across the county the first week in August. "We want to head off as many first week problems as we can," Williams said. 'We discovered last year that we needed those first schools to be picked up at the end of the school day to let out a little early those first couple days, so the drivers could make it back to their second school runs on time, so we will request that again this year."

School Board member Diane Coleman of Navarre asked if there was a way for bus drivers to have a checklist to mark off each student as they got off the bus, and where they got off. "We don't want problems like we had last year, when I was called to West Navarre Primary because a distraught Mom could not get an answer from a bus driver whether her child even got on a bus, let alone of they got off or where."

Coleman said when she was a teacher, each elementary teacher took the students to the bus and had a check list to make sure each student did get on the right bus. "I don't know why each bus driver cannot have such a checklist, or some system, where they could check off when a student leaves the bus and where. it takes a minute or two for students to get their backpacks and make it up the aisle."

Williams said drivers already do have checklists of students who are riding the bus and their stops. "But especially that first day or first few days, there will be students not registered on the bus routes, and new students being added, and our drivers are already under tremendous pressure that first day or two. And last year we had 16 regular drivers out, with substitute bench drivers having to do their routes, the first few days of school. That adds another level of confusion. They are trying to make sure they get to each stop on time, and get to the next school on time, and it is all pressure packed. To ask each student their name as they get off the bus would be almost impossible."

Transportation Director Harrell said in the future, if the board approves adding to the new GPS system they are putting on some buses this year, they would have be able to track students as they got on and off the bus through a GPS tag system. But until then, bus drivers will need to get to know their students and routes over time, and try to follow the list as they have in the past.