Despite calls for his firing following a lopsided state Supreme Court loss, Republican Party of Wisconsin Chairman Brian Schimming is still on the job.
The post Brian Schimming is still running the state GOP. Party leaders say they can’t talk about it. appeared first on WPR.
The racial disparities within Wisconsin's prison system are some of the starkest in the nation, according to a new report by a public policy think tank.
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The Wisconsin Supreme Court is considering whether records relating to people found incompetent to vote should be made available to the public.
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The crowded Republican primary for Wisconsin's 7th Congressional District seat got smaller Tuesday, as GOP candidate Paul Wassgren of Ashland announced he's suspending his campaign.
The post Paul Wassgren drops out of race for 7th Congressional District appeared first on WPR.
Overdose deaths are continuing to drop in Milwaukee County.
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Rural school districts across Wisconsin are struggling to cover costs, even when voters approve property tax increases.
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Hundreds of parents, teachers and community members in the Delavan-Darien School District are asking board members to reconsider a plan to either reduce or eliminate its dual language program.
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Wisconsin is more than halfway toward its forest conservation and tree planting goals, Gov. Tony Evers announced ahead of Earth Day.
The post Wisconsin has planted more than 54M trees since 2021, but forest conservation goals at risk appeared first on WPR.
More than 10,000 Wisconsinites used methadone treatment in 2024 to recover from opioid use disorder. But state regulations make accessing treatment more difficult for those patients, providers and researchers say.
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Some close watchers of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s budget aren’t thrilled with the Trump administration’s proposal — but they're hopeful some of the suggested cuts won’t make it in the final spending plans passed by Congress.
The post Trump wants to slash $5B from USDA’s budget. That could hurt rural America, critics say. appeared first on WPR.
We cover industry shoutouts, conference connections, a terrifying bus vs. train encounter and Diesel Emissions Reduction Act updates.
“One thing about transportation [is] it’s never boring.” Transportation Supervisor Melody Best offers a behind-the-scenes look at how operations are handled in Kenai Peninsula Borough School District in Alaska amid adverse weather, multiple school closures, budget cuts, technology needs and even moose in the road. She also shares the benefits of participating in the STN EXPO East Mentorship Program in Charlotte, North Carolina last month.
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The post (STN Podcast E303) Moose in the Road: Making School Bus Operations Work in Alaska appeared first on School Transportation News.
Nathan Bauman first found love, then he found his work passion.
And finally he helped his student transportation department recover roughly $500,000 in funds associated with field trips funded by various departments.
His journey began in 2009, when he was a bus driver at Aldine Independent School District in Texas and his then-girlfriend’s mother was running the field trip department.
She was struggling to integrate a new digital system the district had invested in to streamline the request-and-approval process for field trips. The new system was designed to replace the inefficient process of back-and-forth emailing that required a month’s notice for a typical field trip.
He volunteered to troubleshoot the issue, resolved it with the vendor and was promptly asked to take on more technical tasks as challenges arose across the student transportation department.
“I was naturally strong at solving these problems and was able to help the district a lot more in a technical role that served the entire department than simply as a driver,” he explained. “It’s rewarding to be able to troubleshoot issues that I know help the drivers and the staff run smarter.”
A year later he was promoted into a technical assistant role and he’s been helping the transportation department leverage busHive, the field trip software, ever since.
His work culminated in the efficient recouping of approximately $500,00 every school year from different district departments which rely on the transportation department to shuttle students to and from a diverse set of activities and programs.
“The process to recoup these funds would take an incredible amount of time, energy and focus to complete if it were not for busHive,” Bauman said.
“The fact that it automates so many of the calculations involved in so many different types of unique trips makes it easy for me to work across the district to recoup a significant amount to our department.”
Not every field trip is created equal, especially as it relates to funding.
Burnham said about 65 percent of the field trips are normal activities that are already part of the funding schedule for the transportation department, including athletics and inter-district activities.
The remaining 35 percent of the non-fixed route trips are associated with a third-party funding source, often federal or some other academic funding.
These trips carry a significant cost, averaging about $300 – $500 per run.
“There is so much variability and diversity among these trips so it’s not something we can easily crank out in a spreadsheet,” he said. “It takes a lot of focus and expertise to capture all the unique data in a way that makes it easy for us and simple for the other departments.”
In a district with 56,000 students and a transportation department that maintains 474 buses that traveled nearly five million miles last academic year, the costs of these trips add up to significant sums.
Barnham estimates these special field and activity trips total approximately 2,500 per year.
That’s where the district’s investment in the busHive software application pays dividends.
Its ability to automate the request-to-approval-to-driver assignment process without a flurry of back-and-forth emails has silenced the chaotic noise long associated with this process.
The 30-day request is still department policy, but the busHive software allows Barnham and his team to respond rapidly when a one-off last-minute request knocks at their door.
“Most of the district staff are very good about putting their requests in well in advance and it helps us manage and plan, but we’re also able to respond nearly immediately when someone forgets or a true last-minute opportunity presents itself,” he explained.
“We can get a request today and be ready to dispatch a bus tomorrow and not have it disrupt us. busHive makes it easy to route it across all the approvals and get the driver assigned in no time.”
But the financial side of the equation is where the busHive investment shifts from efficiency accelerator to financial differentiator.
Prior to busHive, the district had to manually calculate the value of each of those 2,500 unique trips and then engage in email requests for reimbursements. The process was slow, tedious and rife with opportunities for clerical or accounting errors to disrupt prompt payments.
“There is so much variability and diversity among these trips so it’s not something we can easily crank out in a spreadsheet,” he said. “It takes a lot of focus and expertise to capture all the unique data in a way that makes it easy for us and simple for the other department.”
Today, busHive automates the calculations, creates an invoice, integrates with a third-party financial management software to make the request and receives the reimbursement.
From request to receipt, the money is often received in about three days.
“Without busHive, this could take weeks of back and forth,” he said. “The calculations alone would be an enormous burden nevermind the reconciliation of the receipts. busHive automates so much of the heavy lifting and creates a smooth system for every person in the process.”
Bauman calculates the funds recouped equate to about $500,000 per school year. Without busHive, it would be nearly impossible to process all the requests required to achieve that recouping.
“Not everyone appreciates so many of the intricacies of special trips and how we pay for them and how the transportation department serves the district,” he said.
“It has made a world of difference to our department and our accounting to have a system that automates nearly every part of the process.”
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The post Aldine ISD Transportation Uses BusHive Technology to Save Big appeared first on School Transportation News.
Teaching school bus safety behavior to younger student riders comes in a variety of forms. A Georgia grandmother is using a children’s book to bring the safety lessons to life.
Annette Bentley-Smith, or Mrs. Annie, has a passion for writing. She self-published her first book in 2015. Since then, she has expanded her books for children to cover various facets of education and other childhood experiences, including bullying, wearing braces, living through divorce and sleepovers. This eventually led her to the yellow school bus, a part of millions of children’s educational journey.
Bentley-Smith said her longtime friend of over 10 years, school bus driver Jeremy Tackett, mentioned to her that he doesn’t see children’s books on the topic of school bus safety. He shared many real-life experiences from his own career as a school bus driver. Her own two grown sons rode the school bus and her six-year-old step-grandson now does the same. All those experiences shaped the story.
She added that another friend shared with her that his daughter, who was in first grade at the time, being bullied onboard the bus by a fifth-grade student. It escalated to a physical assault inside the school.
“Safety is a broad word, it’s an umbrella,” she said.
She continued that physical safety, emotional safety, bravery, challenging new life experiences, these are all things she writes about as they’re not only situations faced by many children but “all of my books are based on actual experiences” which she said hopes will help children relate to the stories.
She said that her titular character, “Kobe the Koala,” was created to resonate with children and that she has tried to use a rhyming style to make the safety education easier to remember .
“I love my books to rhyme it because I feel like it makes it stick more and makes it more relatable. It makes it more fun and then it’s not just a book of rules,” said Bentley-Smith.
Kobe is also a plush toy. Bentley-Smith, the Georgia grandmother, explained that the toy not only serves as a physical comfort to students but as an auditory reminder. The children’s families can record themselves reading the book aloud, and the audio is stored within the Kobe toy. She said her granddaughter had once said to her, “I wish you could be here every night to read to me.” That inspired this journey to create a toy that can carry the voice of their loved ones.
The story in “Kobe the Koala and the School Bus Mission” follows the main character walking through the woods and seeing a school bus drive by. As it does, students demonstrate unsafe behaviors by hanging out the windows and throwing objects outside. Kobe then goes onto the school bus and starts explaining to the students that safe behaviors means staying seated, keeping backpacks out of the aisle, and speaking softly.
The goal of the story is to teach students how to be brave and set good examples for their peers which makes the school bus ride safe and fun, not only for themselves but for the driver.
“They [school bus drivers] are trying to, you know, stay focused on the road, but then at the same time, they have to stay focused on these kids and when all this commotion is going on, it’s unsafe for the kids and unsafe for the bus driver.,” stated Bentley-Smith. “So, it kind of ties in with my mission, with the kids, teaching the kids bravery and speaking up. And being willing to practice good safety and good behavior,”
Bentley-Smith posted the following review on LinkedIn from a first-grade teacher who used the book with her class:
“I read this book before our field trip and it was perfect,” the reader wrote. “I went over how to behave during the field trip and this helped to discuss how to ride a bus for the ones who are not bus riders. It helped to keep our bus clean and they were ready to discuss the right and wrong ways to ride a bus. They loved it and appreciated the fact that the author was local!”
Bentley-Smith recommends using a rewards system that gives students a sense of accomplishment when they consistently practice safe school bus behavior through a “School Bus Bucks” program that has a prize of a pin that reads “School Bus Safety Star.”
She explained that she plans to use the Kobe character in a series of 10 books that will be set in different states across the country. This first book in the series is set in her home state of Georgia.
Her website provides information about a sponsorship called the “The 485 Children’s Mission,” which looks to give 485 copies of the “Kobe the Koala and the School Bus Mission” as resources to students across the country through placement in schools, community organizations, families in need, literacy programs, and directly to student transportation professionals as part of their own safety training programs.
Related: NC Transportation Manager Channels Passion for Education, Safety into Children’s Books
Related: School Bus Driver Creates Children’s Book to Promote School Bus Safety
Related: Children’s Books by School Bus Drivers Double as Safety Education Tool
The post Georgia Grandmother Writes School Bus Safety Book for Children appeared first on School Transportation News.
The National Transportation Safety Board recounted the incidents leading up to the fatal March 27 Clarksville-Montgomery County School System bus crash with release of a preliminary report, but the agency won’t know or release the exact cause for another year and a half.
NTSB wrote in its preliminary report that the crash occurred April 16 at about 11:35 a.m. A Clarksville-Montgomery school bus was traveling west on US-70 in Carroll County, Tennessee, a two-lane roadway with a 55-mph speed limit. The school bus was occupied by the driver, named in a lawsuit as Sabrina Ducksworth, four adult chaperones and 24 student passengers. Ducksworth was taking students from Kenwood Middle School to a school event in Jackson.
At the same time, a 2013 International WorkStar dump truck operated by the Tennessee Department of Transportation and occupied by a driver and passenger as well as a 2014 Chevrolet Trailblazer sport utility, also occupied by a driver and passenger, were traveling east in the oncoming lane. The weather was clear and the roadway was dry.
As the school bus approached a curve in the highway, it crossed the centerline and entered the eastbound lane. NTSB said the left side of the school bus struck the left side of the dump truck in a sideswipe collision. After hitting the dump truck, the school bus then collided with the SUV, departed the roadway to the south, and came to rest facing down the roadside embankment. The school bus remained upright.
Two student school bus fatalities resulted. Local media outlets identified the students as two eighth-grade girls: Zoe Davis and Arianna Pearson, both 13 years old. School bus driver Ducksworth sustained serious injuries. Bus passenger injuries ranged from minor to serious and the two occupants of the dump truck also sustained serious injuries. The NTSB stated that occupants of the SUV were uninjured.
Related: Update: Tennessee Crash Kills 2 Students During Field Trip
Related: Chattanooga School Bus Driver Receives 4-Year Prison Sentence
Related: Florida Driver Arrested After Train Strikes School Bus Carrying 29 Students
Related: First Responders Critical in School Bus Emergencies
As STN previously reported, the parents of Davis filed a wrongful death lawsuit in response to the school bus fatalities. The family seeks a jury award of up to $5 million.
The suit alleges that Ducksworth was distracted, fatigued, reckless, and failed to follow training, traffic laws and lane discipline. The lawsuit also claims the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System was negligent in hiring, training and supervising her. The lawsuit additionally argues the district failed to adequately check her fitness for the job before hiring her.
However, others in local media reports or on social media expressed that Duckworth may have suffered a medical episode.
The Tennessee Highway Patrol and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration are aiding in the investigation, which remains under investigation. NTSB told School Transportation News it cannot share details of what the FMCSA is assisting on, but said all NTSB investigations operate under what a “Party System,” which allows the agency to bring in technical experts from other organizations to supplement the knowledge of our investigators.”
The post NTSB Preliminary Report Details Fatal Tennessee School Bus Crash appeared first on School Transportation News.
CHATHAM, Ill. – In recognition of April being designated as Distracted Driving Awareness Month, BusGates, the makers of LED stop arm extensions, is raising awareness about the ongoing risks students face at school bus stops and asking drivers to be more diligent while encouraging communities to consider additional safety measures aimed at preventing illegal passing incidents that put students at significant risk of injury or worse.
Seeing motorists repeatedly ignore traditional school bus warning signals is a daily frustration for many school bus drivers, including Cindy Morris, a veteran bus driver for the Ball-Chatham school district in Illinois whose perspective is the subject of a new video campaign being launched this month.
“It’s been a huge issue. I’ve literally had people just watch me drop off [students] and still go by. Anytime you can draw more attention to something, it’s going to make changes and BusGates has,” said Morris.National data emphasizes the scale of the issue. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, an estimated 43.5 million illegal school bus passings occur each year in the United States, highlighting the persistent danger students face when boarding and exiting the bus.
“It’s time to move beyond reactive tools after a child has already been put at risk”, said Dan Thompson, Co-Founder at BusGates. “Real solutions exist today that proactively reduce illegal passing and protect children in the moment, and our stop arm extensions are a proven way to reduce violations before they happen.”
Communities that have implemented stop-arm extensions have reported reductions in illegal passing incidents, with some school districts noting significant decreases following deployment. The approach focuses on addressing driver behavior at the point of risk by increasing visibility of the school buses’ stop arm and reinforcing the expectation to stop when it’s extended.
BusGates is also encouraging parents and educators to use Distracted Driving Awareness Month as an opportunity to talk with students about safe crossing practices and to engage in conversations about bus stop safety within their communities.
Drivers are reminded to remain alert, particularly in residential areas and along school bus routes. Safety officials recommend avoiding phone use while driving, reducing speed near bus stops, and anticipating that children may cross the street unexpectedly.
“In today’s environment of constant distraction, we need safety measures that make school buses impossible to miss”, added Jeff Stauffer, Co-Founder at BusGates. “Stop-arm extensions increase visibility of the school bus and help reduce illegal drive arounds, keeping students safe when they get on and off the bus.”
BusGates, a stop-arm extension technology designed to increase the visibility and physical presence of a school bus stop signal, is being implemented in districts across the U.S. and Canada as part of broader efforts to improve student safety. The device extends into the roadway when the bus is stopped, creating a more prominent visual cue for approaching drivers and prompting them to slow down and stop.
BusGates Stop Arm Extensions are being used by school districts in 26 states including:
Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, as well as in Canada.
About Bus Gates:
Bus Gates is on a mission to reduce vehicle “drive-arounds” at bus stops across America and make getting to and from school safer for students. Bus Gates stop-arm extensions are a simple, cost-effective solution to a major problem – cars ignoring stopped school bus warnings putting students at risk. Bus Gates stop-arm extensions easily retro fits to the existing school bus stop signs. They offer additional visibility and stick out further from the bus to make drivers more aware and reduce illegal “drive-arounds” by up to 95%. www.busgates.com
The post BusGates Urges Proactive Measures During Distracted Driving Awareness Month to Protect Students at Bus Stops appeared first on School Transportation News.
Emergency response is non-negotiable safety and security training for student transportation professionals as they are the first line of defense in active-threat situations that take place on the school bus.
The “Elements of School Transportation Active-Threat Response Training” four-hour seminar on Friday, July 10 at STN EXPO West conference will be organized into four distinct sections. It begins with the doctrine of in loco parentis, Latin for “in the place of a parent,” the legal term for assuming the responsibility of a child or minor. In this instance, in loco parentis ensures safety through threat recognition as well as understanding physiological stress responses.
The second part moves to de-escalation training and crisis response, explaining how to address behavioral or emotional triggers with appropriate communication techniques to defuse the situation before it becomes physical.
The third section covers behavioral intelligence. Attendees will learn to train their school bus drivers to recognize their unique placement of observation of student behavior patterns and be alert to areas of concern before an incident occurs.
Part four of the seminar will shed light on quick-threat response, including emergency communication, scenario-based security training and defensive physical intervention.
Attendees will leave the seminar with a realistic and actionable plan to equip their school bus drivers and other student transportation staff with following legal protocol, recognizing warning signs and communicating them before incidents occur, and formiong a structured response to cases of violence onboard the school bus.
The seminar is presented School Transportation Active Threat Response Training, or S.T.A.R.T., a program created by veteran Ohio law enforcement officers to train student transportation professionals in the school bus environment to be prepared for emergency situations. The lead presenters will be Jim Levine, founder of S.T.A.R.T., and John Zippay, S.T.A.R.T. co-founder and current program coordinator, along with Kevin Spackman, a S.T.A.R.T senior instructor, and Greg Truhan, former U.S. Secret Service special agent, and S.T.A.R.T program developer and senior training instructor.
All four of the instructors have extensive experience in law enforcement. Levine began his career at the Arlington County Police Department in Virginia and since then has served as a S.W.A.T. instructor as well as a field training officer, co-founded a global security organization near Washington D.C., is certified in active-shooter response techniques as well as through the Ohio Crime Prevention Association in the concepts of CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design) and Crisis Intervention Training. Zippay currently serves as full-time police officer for the South Russell Police Department in Ohio alongside Spackman and is also a member of the Ohio School Resource Association and a certified Crisis Intervention Team member.
Save $100 on main conference registration with Early Bird Savings when you act by June 5. The STN EXPO West conference will be held July 9-15 at the Peppermill Resort in Reno, Nevada. Updates to agenda and speaker lists can be found at stnexpo.com/west.
Related: STN EXPO West Registration Open for 2026, Features Innovative Conference Experience
Related: Turkel to Uncover Secrets of Communicating Relevance at STN EXPO West
Related: Security Expert Shares Key Indicators of Violence for School Transportation Safety
The post Active-threat Response Training Subject of Opening STN EXPO West Session appeared first on School Transportation News.
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