WATERBURY – It may not be well-known, but All-Star Transportation’s school bus drivers and monitors utilize the safety skills they learned as trainees every day they are on the job. And they receive continuous safety training throughout the school year to expand their knowledge and to make sure they don’t ignore their critical responsibilities.
“The safe transportation of students is our top priority,” says Leslie Sheldon, All-Star Transportation’s operations manager. “We emphasize it daily. We provide regular safety training, and we continuously strive to improve. Fortunately, we have a highly committed staff that is dedicated to our children and to providing high-quality service.”
Critical to sustaining the safety culture that exists at All-Star Transportation is the hands-on training that the company provides to its employees from their first day on the job and continuing throughout their careers. A key piece of that training are the videos that the company’s safety team produces in-house. The videos are shared throughout the company at safety meetings and are posted on All-Star’s website, Facebook and YouTube pages for easy access.
The two most recent videos focus on the child check and drop-off procedures . Drivers perform the child safety check procedure after they have dropped off the last student on each route. It requires a driver to walk the entire bus and check to make sure no child is left behind and that no important article has been forgotten on the bus.
Each bus is also equipped with a child check system that is activated automatically when a driver turns on the flashing lights and opens the door to pick up a student. When a driver turns off the bus or exits the bus, the child check system must be deactivated or an alarm will sound. A driver deactivates the alarm while doing the safety walkthrough. This is the final check of the vehicle that all drivers are required to do.
The drop-off procedure video details all the steps a driver must follow when dropping off students at their bus stops. The video explains and demonstrates the carefully considered safety reasons for each step of the drop-off process.
“These children we transport every day are someone’s babies, and we need to always remember this. Safety is not something that just happens,” says Brenda Bass, All-Star’s director of training. “It requires continuous training, continuous improvement and constant vigilance. We can never be complacent about our jobs.”
To emphasize that point, All-Star’s next training video will target driver complacency. The video will be available soon as the company prepares for its Spring into Safety! program. You will find the video and all others on All-Star’s website and YouTube channels.