RENO, Nev. — As school districts continue investing millions of dollars in cameras, secure entrances, metal detectors and other campus security measures, one group of law enforcement professionals says an equally important piece of the safety puzzle continues to receive far less attention: School transportation.
Instructors with Levine Security Solutions on Friday presented a four-hour overview of the School Transportation Active Response Training (S.T.A.R.T.) program. They urged transportation leaders to prepare their school bus drivers for active threats, arguing that school buses have become one of the most vulnerable environments in K-12 education because drivers are often the first, and only, adults available to respond when a crisis unfolds.
“Our mission has been and will continue to be proactive,” S.T.A.R.T. co-founder Jim Levine told attendees. “We have to get bus drivers to understand what the threat looks like and what the response options could be, because it’s not fair. It’s not fair to them, and it’s not fair to the community that entrusts their kids to be on that bus.”
Levine, a former school resource officer and active-duty law enforcement officer as well as founder and president of Levine Security Solutions, said the program grew out of an experience in 2015, when he inspected security measures at an Ohio school district. After seeing reinforced doors, protective window film and fencing around school buildings, he visited the transportation department and asked what type of active threat training bus drivers had received.
The answer surprised him.
“The troopers are here almost every month. They check the buses, but they’ve never talked to the drivers about what to look for or what to do,” Levine recalled.
That conversation launched what has become an 11-year effort to educate transportation professionals nationwide on recognizing warning signs, preventing violence and responding during life-threatening emergencies.
Levine argued that while schools have dramatically strengthened building security over the past decade, transportation has largely remained an afterthought.
“We target hard in the schools so much that we’ve just transferred the threat to the buses,” he said.
He pointed to recent incidents involving weapons on school buses and evolving threats such as 3D-printed firearms as examples of why transportation departments must prepare for scenarios that extend beyond traditional student management.
“If your bus drivers had an active threat on their bus, would they know how to respond in the first three to five seconds?” Levine asked the audience. “If the answer is no, that’s why we’re here.”
Preparing Drivers Before Violence Occurs
Active-duty police officer John Zippay, S.T.A.R.T. co-founder and vice president of Levine Security Solutions, explained that the organization’s eight-hour training program focuses on five areas: Legal responsibilities, threat recognition, juvenile behavioral intelligence, crisis de-escalation and active threat response. The conference session condensed those lessons into a four-hour overview.
“We truly believe [bus drivers] are our forgotten heroes,” Zippay said. “We forget about them.”
One of the most important lessons, he said, is helping drivers establish a “baseline” for their routes.
Because drivers travel the same neighborhoods and interact with many of the same students each day, they are uniquely positioned to recognize when something appears out of place.
Whether it is an unfamiliar person lingering at a bus stop, a parent behaving unusually, or a student whose demeanor suddenly changes, recognizing those anomalies can give drivers valuable time to react and alert others before a situation escalates.
The training also emphasizes a driver’s legal “duty of care” and responsibility to protect students while they are on the bus.
Zippay said drivers sometimes misunderstand “no hands-on” policies as meaning they can never physically intervene. Instead, instructors teach that while physical force should always be a last resort, drivers have both the authority and responsibility to act when students face immediate danger.
“We want to empower drivers,” he said. “We don’t want that pendulum to swing so far that they think they can’t do anything.”
Building Relationships that Prevent Violence
Former U.S. Secret Service Special Agent Greg Truhan shifted the conversation from responding to violence to preventing it altogether.
Drawing upon research conducted by the Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center, Truhan said many school attackers exhibited warning signs long before carrying out acts of violence.
Perhaps most significant, he noted, was one recurring finding among K-12 school shooters.
“School shooters reported having no trusting relationships with a responsible adult, not one,” Truhan said.
For transportation professionals, that research reinforces the importance of building relationships with student riders.
Bus drivers often see students before teachers do each morning and after they leave school each afternoon, giving them opportunities to notice behavioral changes that others may miss.
“They can be that trusted adult,” Truhan said.
He encouraged school bus drivers to ask simple questions when they notice a student appears upset, withdrawn or unusually emotional.
“Are you OK? Is something wrong? How can I help you? What do you need?” he said, adding that even if students choose not to answer immediately, knowing an adult cares may encourage them to seek help later.
Truhan shared examples of bus drivers identifying children in crisis and connecting them with assistance before situations became more serious, underscoring transportation’s role in violence prevention as much as emergency response.
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De-escalation Before Confrontation
Another major component of the S.T.A.R.T. curriculum focuses on crisis de-escalation.
Kevin Spackman, a detective, hostage negotiator and S.T.A.R.T. instructor, said drivers frequently encounter emotionally charged situations involving parents, students, or community members.
“The most important tool on your belt is de-escalation,” Spackman said.
He referenced the case of Las Vegas parent Otis Tanner, who boarded a school bus following a dispute involving his daughter, to illustrate how quickly confrontations can escalate.
Although Tanner was charged after the incident, Spackman said the encounter also demonstrated missed opportunities by the bus driver to create distance and reduce the conflict before it became physical.
Rather than engaging an aggressive individual, Spackman encouraged drivers to keep unauthorized persons off the bus whenever possible, remain calm, establish boundaries and leave the area if necessary.
“Shut the door, smile, wave and drive away,” he said. “That threat is greater on the bus than it is off the bus.”
Spackman also discussed techniques such as controlled breathing, maintaining a calm tone of voice, active listening and acknowledging concerns without making promises beyond a driver’s authority.
Transportation leaders, he added, should ensure drivers know where to direct parents with complaints rather than feeling obligated to resolve every issue themselves.
Training for the Worst-Case Scenario
The session concluded with active threat response strategies specifically designed for school buses.
Unlike school staff inside buildings, drivers have limited resources available during an emergency and often must manage situations alone until law enforcement arrives.
The S.T.A.R.T. instructors demonstrated tactics designed to disrupt an attack by using the movement of the bus to destabilize an armed assailant, create opportunities for students to escape and give drivers time to intervene.
Although the techniques involve physical action, the instructors stressed that the objective is not to turn drivers into police officers but to give them practical options when every second counts.
“The worst thing they can do is freeze,” Zippay said. “Training gives them something to fall back on.”
Levine acknowledged that funding additional training can be difficult, but he urged transportation directors to advocate for it with district leaders, community organizations and grant providers.
He argued that investments in transportation security represent only a fraction of what many districts already spend on building security infrastructure while potentially protecting dozens of students aboard every bus.
“We cannot allow this to continue,” Levine said. “We have to raise the awareness substantially for the safety of our kids and for our bus drivers.”
As school safety discussions continue evolving, the S.T.A.R.T. instructors left transportation professionals with a central message: School buses should no longer be viewed as separate from campus security but as an essential component of every district’s comprehensive safety strategy.
Article written with the assistance of AI from a session transcrpowered by Advanced iFrame
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The post School Bus Drivers Need Active Threat Training as Security Evolves, Experts Say appeared first on School Transportation News.
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