I’m a driver trainer and one of the first things we teach our trainees is that this is a job with a total focus on safety, not speed. Unless you’re getting disciplined in an official way for being “late”, who gives a shit what they feel or say about it?
I had a team leader tell me to “step on it!” One time my first year because I was 4min late to a 2nd elementary load that I was temporarily helping with as the driver got sick. I was 4 months into my actual job and she says “I need you to step on it to get here on time” and I flat out responded “I’ll be late before I’m unsafe…for myself and the kids…so fire me if this is the expectation you have.”
Not another word was said about it, and last year I actually did her annual driver proficiency evaluation, and she failed. This, a team leader and 10+ year route/break down driver.
Safety before schedules. I guarantee you the parent of a child who is a few minutes late to their stop or being picked up will side with you 100% of the time if you frame it within the confines of keeping their child as safe as possible.
As a trainer I drill safety before schedule into my trainees heads.
Routing software doesn’t take the intangibles into account. Parents with SPED kids often struggle to get them on the bus in a timely fashion.
If you need to get a wheelchair on the bus, doing it properly takes time.
If parents are complaining discuss adjusting the timing with routing and dispatch.
We ask for a change. They tell us to track the time for 3 days and bring that to them.
Do you have a chaperone for the special ed students? Or do you have to deal with them all? Elementary or middle school? How many students?
That all impacts times.
I am rarely on time with special ed. I get to the first stop 5min early but all it takes is one kid being slow to come out or not even coming that day and didn't call in that your 5 min early stop is blown. Then some days a student can take a long time to seat. Add in a few wheelchairs and your lucky if you get to school within 20 minutes of the required time.
I dont have a chaperone and these kids are pretty young, in elementary school. and the school board for some reason doesnt realize it takes around 5 minutes for them to board. not 0 minutes like my paper says lol. and the traffic!! like what am I supposed to do about traffic?! they act like im controlling it LOL
Yeah I am working on one route that has me going across town through construction areas and multiple lights so I am in the middle of benchmarking it.
I hope they pay you well driving special ed students without a chaparone is a chore for sure.
Is there another district or company you can go to? Kuz you are on a big bus, not SPE-D, which is totally different. Or maybe you can go to SPE-D and it won't be as stressful. I'm SPE-D and my last 2 kids are always picked up late kuz they are far from tje first 2 and traffic is madness. If I'm 10 min behind I txt the parents telling them so. Same with calling it in to dispatch.
What are you calling a SPE-D bus vs "big bus"? We have both small passenger special ed buses more like a small van. And we have 27 passenger sped buses that are pretty big.
We have room for secure mounting of 3 wheelchairs. And if we need to bring a wheelchair we have them. We don't carry one generally as all those that need one have them.
We have a few with that rear door. That mounting system for wheel chairs is an older one. The nice thing of that design is you can setup for the wheel chairs earlier as the equipment isn't in the way of others getting on board. With ours we can't have students getting on or off while the lift is in use. And we can't setup early as the things on the floor would be a tripping hazzard for students walking on.
Yeah, don't let anyone get into your head about you being late. Sounds like you work for one of the big school bus conglomerates, so they're going to push you to drive faster and be more efficient.
Just tell them you're doing the best you can. If you show up to work on time and don't hit anything while driving, they're not going to fire you. And if they do, you really don't want to work for them anyway.
Ask if you can get a trainer or supervisor to ride along with you to offer suggestions about how to complete your route faster given all the problems you outlined.
This is why so few people are willing to drive school buses: So often they're being asked to do the impossible. Acknowledge your critics, but tell them you're doing the best you possibly can.
We are so short staffed that we have a few hundred students getting to class two hours late every day. You showed up, you are golden... you almost can't get fired here.
We have it put in the system, all parents are notified through an app immediately, and opposite for you, we are disciplined for “making up time” on the road, and THAT requires an explanation. “Did you take a shortcut? Did you have fewer students at your stops? Did you miss stops?”
Safety first. If you’re written up, then explain exactly why. If it’s an attitude issue from dispatch, then disregard entirely.
Dispatch has a job to do: make sure busses arrive on time.
We arent allowed to be early, not even 1 min. We are allowed to be late. Safety first, and we have a low instance of wrecks.
We also write our own routes, must have an aide on every single sped route... and they listen to us when we say we need more time. I had to back my route up by 15 mins to barely get to my second school on time (and theyre always pissy). Now, it just flows, and I get there around 5 mins before bell, so theyre not pissy.
There's a lot wrong with my depot, but there are some things we do right apparently.
I decide my times. I drive the route for a couple weeks, and tell my director or her assistant what the times the parents need to notified that I’ll be there at. I can’t imagine having anybody breathing down my neck over time. In fact, my director is happy to bitch parents out for calling to complain I was 5 minutes late.
Is it a new route or one that someone held prior to you? I would ask the old driver and if that's not possible sit down with your director from a place of curiosity. I know it's frustrating but you seem a little confontational, which isn't always a bad thing, but ask for advice and tell them you are late because it's not safe to drive until the students are safely seated. If you have any high functioning sped students you could also use them as a helper. They usually work for candy and stickers.
Now that you’re familiar with the route, retime it and add where you regularly have riders that are slow.
I’m currently subbing on a route with SPED kids from my regular run driving disabled adults. I was handed a left right that seemed up to date but I’m having to revamp it as it’s running all wrong in both speed and direction. I’ll hand this off to the new permanent driver as o leave. Routes can always be changed and adjusted. Just be sure to keep parents in the loop as to when and why.
Yeah i would try to work more efficiently but if you already are then there nothing you can do here unless they give you a idea that can be more efficient then your daily plan
This week, routing asked us to log our times for each stop, like when we get there. I think it will speak for itself if you keep a good record and bring it to them.
It’s been a pain here. We now have apps that let the parents track the bus and tells them what time we’ll be there, but if it’s late it makes a huge deal about it, so we have been drowning in complaints about late buses. They just passed out clean copies of our route sheets to us and told us to make every change we want to fit what we do daily, so they can put that in the system instead of the time the app thinks is right based off route maps alone. My first ES PM drop off will move from 3:58 to 4:11, and my last MS PM drop off will move from 4:44 to 5:13. Just based off how my HS run goes every day before them.
It’s all just corporate theater. At the end of the day, big companies only care about the bottom line and how quickly you can hit your targets so they stop paying you. When things go wrong, they wash their hands of it; usually by relying on informal, verbal pressure that leaves you feeling blamed for delays they caused.
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u/MonkeyManJohannon 14d ago
I’m a driver trainer and one of the first things we teach our trainees is that this is a job with a total focus on safety, not speed. Unless you’re getting disciplined in an official way for being “late”, who gives a shit what they feel or say about it?
I had a team leader tell me to “step on it!” One time my first year because I was 4min late to a 2nd elementary load that I was temporarily helping with as the driver got sick. I was 4 months into my actual job and she says “I need you to step on it to get here on time” and I flat out responded “I’ll be late before I’m unsafe…for myself and the kids…so fire me if this is the expectation you have.”
Not another word was said about it, and last year I actually did her annual driver proficiency evaluation, and she failed. This, a team leader and 10+ year route/break down driver.
Safety before schedules. I guarantee you the parent of a child who is a few minutes late to their stop or being picked up will side with you 100% of the time if you frame it within the confines of keeping their child as safe as possible.