Now Entering.... October!

We feel like we blinked -- and lost September!







Every year at this time we pause to review the start of the school year. We generally post a massive piece of paper somewhere in the office for a week or ten days. Our staff has the opportunity to make notes about what we need to improve or change so next year's opening week is better. We save the notes from year to year and review them at the end of July to make sure we don't forget anything important. It's a very effective system.

This year our list is very brief:

1. Create a driver "Help Desk" during the first week and have one staff person dedicated to resolving driver issues and process driver requests.
   
2. Color code bus tags at elementary schools and put matching colors above seats to populate a rudimentary seating system.
   
3. Create a student registration deadline so more parents update addresses and daycare information prior to Open Houses next year.
   
4. Add special needs vehicle parking to our parking diagrams for the special needs drivers.
   

Use one box for each school. All changes and corrections go in the box. That school's helper will have all the changes at route time when heading to the school to assist with pm loading.
This list, my friends, is much, much shorter than it's ever been.

Our goal for next year? We'd like to be able to put all "For Next Year" suggestions on a post it note.

Safe Driving!

Kari

Our Journey To Excellence

These first two weeks of school have seen a surprising change in leadership tactics and policies at our company.For as many years as I've worked here, we've embraced the open-door style management and avoided chains of hierarchy. We call each other co-workers and consider each person who works here a key piece of our family-oriented system. We've long used the company motto "compliance is an obligation; excellence is a choice" to passively encourage our employees to choose excellence.

Somehow that system failed us, our employees, and our customers.

At the start of this school year, a seasoned driver made an embarrassing and completely avoidable mistake, another veteran driver delivered a student to the same wrong address twice, and a third experienced and reliable driver failed to manage students with a kind and caring attitude.

It's clear that we have to adjust our management style. We need clear boundaries and expectations for each person employed by our company. We need to define goals and encourage those who work with us to focus on those goals. We need to stop assuming everyone is doing what they're supposed to do and implement checks and balances. We need to acknowledge our leadership and hierarchy to best protect our company, employees, and customers.

I've long considered mistakes opportunities for teaching. To a certain degree -- with some types of mistakes -- that's true. I'm not sure there's a way to train someone to keep the bus fueled, how to follow the directive "stop at every stop every day", or how to teach someone to be kind and caring.

Stated emphatically here for the first time is the standard we've hinted at for years: we will not tolerate substandard people behind the wheel of our vehicles. It's never been our policy to employ people who are bad drivers. However, there's more to a good bus driver than the ability to safely operate the motor vehicle.

A good bus driver follows state, local, and company laws, regulations, and policies. One of our policies requires buses to be kept at least half full of fuel at all times so we are ready 100% of the time to evacuate the schools should there be a nuclear emergency. With that policy in place, a bus should never be at risk of running out of fuel on route. An excellent bus driver constantly monitors fuel levels, even in the most harsh weather.

A good bus driver communicates effectively with office and shop staff. An excellent bus driver communicates honestly as well, admitting mistakes and taking the opportunity to learn from them.

A good bus driver follows the explicit directions on the route sheets, stopping at every stop every day (especially the first three weeks of the school year). In the early days of the school year, an excellent bus driver calls out the names of the students assigned to the stop because he or she knows the world looks different from the heights of the bus than it does on the road. A student's stop should never be missed.

A good bus driver maintains order on the bus, encouraging good behavior throughout the route. An excellent bus driver manages to encourage good behavior without shouting or berating the little people on the bus.

I am not satisfied with employing good bus drivers; I want excellent bus drivers. Using our new online training website, we will begin to define our boundaries and expectations for our drivers; they are required to visit that online site weekly. In the coming days we will be focusing on creating our company goals and communicating them to our employees. We will also develop ways to ensure our employees understand and partner with us in our quest for excellence.

Today, as I look at each person arriving at work in the morning, I see potential excellence, and I'm excited about where we'll go this year. This is a good place to be at the beginning of the third week of school.

Safe Driving,
Kari

Coming Soon! School Bus Safety Training!

Over the next couple weeks, we will be conducting school bus safety training with our students.

The secondary students will board buses en masse. Drivers will instruct them about emergency exits, two-way radio use, and other safety points. They will then have the opportunity to practice evacuating from the rear of the bus as demonstrated by these drivers.

Secondary students must then take and pass a school bus safety test. We repeat the drill in the spring as a reminder to the students.

The elementary training is a little more hands-on-style training.

Our elementary students first have classroom instruction. The instructor shows the very brief video posted with this article and discusses school bus safety with the students.School

Bus Safety Basics for Elementary Students in District 882.

Each class of students later boards a bus to hear the same school bus safety message they heard first in the classroom. We use the same visual aids as the ones in the video. Before returning to school, the students practice evacuating through the rear emergency exit. After evacuating, they line up and practice crossing in front of the bus, watching the "driver" for the thumbs-up signal.

Elementary students in Minnesota must take and pass a school bus safety exam as well.

Our most important message to students is "Thumbs Up for Safety." It's never okay to approach the bus or cross the road until the driver signals. If the driver doesn't signal, students are instructed to wait. "If the driver is too busy or distracted by something inside the bus to give the signal," we tell them, "he or she is too distracted to be watching traffic. WAIT!"

Some of our drivers are now teaching their students to return the thumbs-up signal. I like that idea. It makes these little people partners in their own safe transportation.

Safe Driving!

Kari

Assignment Time

This week someone asked how we assign routes.

It's very scientific. (Read "Not!" after that statement and smile.)

First, we complete our routes. We look at the stops that require door-side attention and stops in highly-populated areas. We give priority to students who require door-side stops. In the coming year, we will learn how to make our software alert us when a student crosses the street to board the bus.

Next, we review the stops furthest from school and start to plan our spokes-of-a-wheel plan (we don't want buses making circles; we want them to be SPOKES in the wheel).

Third, we look at capacities. Since buses come in many, MANY shapes and sizes, routes must be paired based on how many students will be riding the bus. We depend HEAVILY on parents to make sure we know where students will be.

Once we find a secondary route that matches capacity with elementary routes, we consider geography and location of the elementary routes. Sometimes we have to unpair routes that make sense capacity-wise to make sense geography-wise.

Next, we consider our drivers who bring their kids to work. We think about which school those students need to attend. We have a rule that requires students of drivers to ride on their assigned bus first and their parent's bus second.

Once we've reached this level of driver assignment, we review the drivers' certifications: is the driver eligible for a bus with air brakes or not:?

Finally, we look at our prior-year driver survey. Does a driver want to keep the bus they drove last year, the elementary route, the secondary route, or are they open to whatever is available.

There's certainly nothing simple about routing and route assignment.

Safe Driving!
Kari

The Amazing, Amazing Chase

Last Wednesday we met with our drivers for our annual driver training day.

School bus driver training is often tedious. There are qualification tasks, route issues, and repetitive instruction. Because it's so important to make sure each person we employ is fully qualified, I never find these routine tasks boring or try to hurry people through them. I'm proud of the employees who take qualification seriously.

I can tell, while watching the drivers participate, who is really "getting it" and who is just there because they have to be. The drivers who fully engage are my best and favorite drivers. They are there because they want to be better and do more to keep their students safe. They are the elite.

This year we tried something new.

We planned a "Chase" for our drivers. They were assigned seventeen tasks. Each task, with one exception, was designed to teach them something they will need to know during the coming year.

Prior to deciding to embark on our "Chase" I did some research. I called the Wright County Sherriff's Department and the State Patrol. I contacted the Superintendent of Schools and each building administrator. I talked to a road crew foreman, the TDS people, Dunn Brothers Coffee, and a couple employees.

Everyone was so enthusiastic about our intent, and thought the "Chase" would be a valuable and creative training tool. Each expert contributed something -- a "rule of the game" or a location for an activity or creative input. This "Chase" would be a community effort.

I was excited about the teams of employees. Each team would include people from our various divisions; there would be a regular route driver, a special ed route driver, a trip driver, and a new employee. Each person on the team was there to contribute something important and unique. There would be ten teams in ten buses.

Ten buses, I thought, was a good number. Normally, we send upwards of forty vehicles on the road every day. These ten buses driving through town completing specific tasks would remind our community that SCHOOL IS NEARLY IN SESSION. I received two calls from community members who wondered what the buses were doing. One parent of a Kindergarten student said her daughter was so excited to see the bus coming she squealed!

The first task for each group was to perform the Pre-Trip Inspection during which a driver (in this case a team of drivers) inspects the bus for road worthiness. Our mechanics had deliberately disqualified each bus from road worthiness. We stood and waited to see which teams and which people would find the flaw in their bus.

Some buses were missing Body Fluid Clean-Up or First Aid Kits. Others needed a bulb replaced or didn't have a fire extinguisher. Each flaw was subtle.

We were all impressed with how seriously the drivers took their Inspections, and by how well-matched the teams were. They all completed their tasks at about the same time and left for the sixteen other tasks.

Each team visited each school in the District to practice am and pm parking. They all went to put five gallons of fuel in their buses. Each team practiced a railroad crossing -- important because ours in town are exempt, but they drive to other communities too -- and an alley dock -- important because most "accidents" occur while backing the bus.

We included two skills that most drivers don't always experience: a wheel-chair tie down and a bus with a flat tire. We were able to qualify more drivers to expertly tie-down a wheelchair and show them what a flat tire feels and looks like.

Following the event, we studied GPS records to see how each vehicle navigated the various events. Once of the rules of the game was that no team could violate a federal, state, local, or company law, rule, or policy. Some teams were much more efficient than others, and no one violated a speed restriction or did anything unsafe in traffic. Kudos to those drivers!

This event was also a team-building event. Our new, rookie employees met four or five other people who work for our company. Teams consisted of employees who rarely have the opportunity to interact. They were expected to share the seventeen tasks and talk to each other about the best way to complete each task.

For the most part, our employees were NOT excited when they left the training room to begin their "Chase". But they were excited, happy, and brimming with stories when they returned. In fact, I've had more input from drivers following this meeting than I have had in the past. We plan to find more ways to give our drivers more hands-on training opportunities in the future.

Safe Driving!
Kari