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New bus company: no change to service
Officals from the nationwide bus company First Student, which purchased Laidlaw Educational Services in October, assured local school boards this week that student transportation will not be disrupted by the acquisition.
Members of the Cheektowaga Central, Cheektowaga-Sloan, Cleveland Hill and Maryvale school districts met with First Student representatives on Monday during a joint school board meeting in the Cleveland Hill high school cafeteria.
The meeting served as a "meet and greet" for the districts and the bus company.
John BeGasse, who is in charge of all First Student operations in the eastern half of the United States and Canada, assured the boards that all contracts will be honored, and that local operations officials will remain in place.
BeGasse said First Student is working to bring the latest technology into its fleet of buses, such as global positioning, electronic inspection and devices that can detect persons on a bus, such as a sleeping child.
Stories of a child left behind on a bus occasionally surface in the news, and BeGasse said that in nearly every instance, the bus driver involved is either very new and overwhelmed or extremely experienced and make a rare mistake, with "little in-between."
"The new (drivers) have too much going on," which is how they occasionally miss a student still on a bus. "The very experienced know their students and are usually sure that every child got off the bus" when one, in fact, didn't, BeGasse explained.
According to BeGasse, the company's drivers annually participate in "passenger management training," which includes age-appropriate discipline on buses.
For example, elementary school students generally want to please an adult and will easily conform while high school students would rather not be on the bus.
"Students aren't going to sit quietly for the entire trip," BeGasse added. "They have to be taught what's appropriate for the moment. Halloween is one of the worst days for our drivers."
Problems on buses are usually caused by a handful of students, BeGasse said. If the core group can be effectively handled, "the followers fall away," he added.
First Student began installing global positioning and student identification devices on its buses in 2005, BeGasse said. The global positioning system is monitored at its main headquarters in Cincinnati, allowing local managers to concentrate on other matters.
"Technology on buses will radically change in the next ten years," said BeGasse. "Technology has been expensive for so long, and many technologies couldn't 'talk' to each other until the last two years."
Another technology discussed was electronic bus routing. Cleveland Hill Board President Robert Polino said late student registrations in his district adversely affects bus routes and asked whether First Student will soon have electronic routing available.
"There's no timeline," BeGasse replied. "We just rolled it out this summer."
Monday's meeting was the second in which local school officials discussed student transportation with First Student. A representative of the company met with the four boards in February 2005 to explore the possibility of bidding on transportation services.
Ed Bednarczyk, who was president of the Cheektowaga-Sloan board at the time, compared the 2005 discussion to a "first date" for both sides.
Both sides were cautious during that meeting, with school officials questioning the bus company's desire to bid on transportation, with one official noting that the First Student representative did not clearly state whether the company would bid on a transportation contract.
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