Public School Drivers —
Building a Quality Workforce

The REALITY: Children Are
Safer on the School Bus!

A school bus may not be the coolest way to get to school, but it is the safest, states the third annual "Report Card on School Bus Safety in the U.S." And the single greatest risk to students isn't violence inside the school building, but using other types of transportation.

"It's 87 times safer for your child to take a school bus than to drive them yourself, let them ride with friends, or even walk or ride a bicycle," says school bus safety advocate Dr. Cal LeMon. LeMon has extensively researched pupil transportation in the U.S. and is author of Unreported Miracles: What You Probably Do Not Know About Your Child's School Bus.

Citing statistics between July 1994 and June 1999 from the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the report notes that 435 violent incidents in school-associated settings resulted in deaths, and less than 1% of all homicides and suicides among school children ages 5-19 occur in or around school grounds. A child has a one in two million chance of being killed inside a U.S. school.

By contrast, 600 children are killed each year and many more injured getting to and from school in some vehicle other than a school bus. On average, only 10 children per year among the approximately 24 million school children who ride to school on the bus die in school bus accidents, and those were involved in very severe crashes.

According to Dr. LeMon, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and state-by-state data, school buses have the best safety record in the transportation industry, with some 440,000 public school buses traveling 4.3 billion miles each year, almost always without incident.

More Realities

The reality about public school bus drivers is complicated, but there are several characteristics that are common among drivers: Drivers are passionate about what they do every day in their communities, drivers suffer from grief and stress related to the students they transport, drivers are generally more uniformly confident about their abilities, drivers are more inclined to be vocal about issues and concerns, and drivers are, in general, independent self-starters.

The reality about public school bus drivers also includes the need for much better training and professional development in a vast area of skills that affect their expertise; more on-site driver input in all aspects of the driver workday; better opportunities to make decisions themselves rather than depending on off-site supervisors and administrators; better connection by administrations between drivers and the rest of the "school community;" and the need for the Transportation Supervisor to be included in the Superintendent's Cabinet.

To Section 8: Meaningful Training = Quality Workforce