Bus safety a priority for ECS

Stump and his team of bus drivers work tirelessly to ensure that students are safe as they travel to and from home and school. This week they drove to three locations on three different days to complete bus evacuation drills. The drills are intensive run-throughs of what could happen in the midst of emergency. The drills are conducted each semester and give bus drivers and riders practice for exiting the bus in the safest way possible.

For students that don’t ride the bus there is an on campus drill that happens at each school to give those students practice in case they ride the bus for a field trip or any other reason. “We usually do drills on campus for non-bus riders sometime in the first semester–pretty early,” said Stump. “We try to do it in the first semester, that way we get all the kids who aren’t regular bus riders an opportunity to participate. That way if they’re doing field trips in the first or second semester they’ve already done the drills.”

At ECS the team believes that safety is of the highest importance in transporting precious cargo such as the city’s children.

The students exit through both exits on the school bus to give them experience exiting off of the back of the bus and not just the front. There are precautions taken when students exit from the rear.

“We go to through the front and rear door (to give them that experience),” said Stump. “We do the rear exit early on. For some of the little ones it’s a pretty good drop off the bus so we have a kid out there holding their hand so they can get down (safely). The bus drivers pick out the helpers, one of the older kids on the bus to do it.”

Below is a chart that lists the criteria that bus drivers are measured on as they perform evacuation techniques.