There you go.
Schools on the bus.
The wheels go round and round.
And that's what we're talking about.
It's staying safe a month.
I get together with the Racine County Traffic Safety Commission.
And we're talking about school bus safety.
And I hate to say this, kid.
School starting soon.
I used to hate August because the department stores used to start in with their back to school sale.
Come on.
Give me a break.
It only took one month off already already starting to go back to school.
Now, I started in September, but here they start.
When did they start school here?
August, what?
Within the next two weeks.
Within the next two weeks, they'll be starting school.
Oh, man.
And our USD will start on September 1st.
See, if I was a kid, I'd grow up, become the mayor or the governor and change that to September.
I wouldn't, I wouldn't let that go on.
Okay.
So we're talking about school bus safety.
Let's talk about our guests here today.
We have inspector Nathan Lamb from the Wisconsin State Patrol.
Tell us a little bit about yourself so that everybody knows all about you.
Yeah.
I've been an inspector with the state patrol for about 12 years now.
And I've been inspecting school buses annually for about eight to 10 years.
What are you looking for?
Looking for everything.
Making sure all the lights work, making sure the brakes look good, making sure the tires aren't flat, making sure they got good tread depth on the tires.
That's stuff important.
Yeah, it's pretty important.
Yeah, and of course you inspect the drivers too, right?
Yes, every now and then we will do what's called a spot check inspection where we will go to certain terminals and when the bus drivers get back from their routes, we will go out with them and inspect the bus and make sure that the drivers had the right credentials on their licenses.
When you talk to the driver and he starts running away, that's not a good sign,
right?
Yeah, it's usually not a good sign.
I watch enough YouTube videos, I know when people run, it's not good.
Also joining us, once again, because you were here last year, John Strach is here, super intended.
of transportation.
Well, supervisor.
Supervisor of transportation.
Yeah, I don't want to take a superintendent's job.
Supervisor of transportation.
Soren does great.
Yeah, I'm supervisor of transportation with Racine Unified School District.
All right, and you do what now?
I work with both the public and the private schools to ensure that the transportation that is required for the students occurs.
We work with a contracted service, which provides transportation.
We work with first student and
you'll shortly be seeing all the buses start to hit the road.
So be prepared to adjust accordingly.
Private schools, again, will be starting in approximately two weeks.
And we make sure that students can get picked up.
You pick them up at their homes anymore?
No, we normally do group stops.
There are a number of areas, though, that due to the road spots on Five Mile Road or
four-mile road that are out in our rural areas.
We do make home stops in those locations, but in most of our rural locations, we do do group stops around the area.
Let's get the elephant in the room settled here.
Comes up every time we talk about this seatbelts.
There are no seatbelts on school buses.
I think I know the reason why, because if there's an emergency, you got 50 kids to unbuckle.
And, you know, is that similar?
Is that the reason?
Yeah, it's one of the reasons why the seats are the way they are.
They create something that's called compartmentalization.
And the, you know, yes, the child may move around inside that, but if the bus is to tip or to roll and everybody has seat belted in, we're not dealing with adults who can...
at least calm down enough to get themselves unbuckled and in some cases because of the way the seat belt is, you can't get out.
So in a school bus, trying to extricate everybody from a seat and get them out in a safe distance away from the bus after an accident, the seat belts become prohibitive at that point.
Yeah.
Let's talk about some of the things on our list here.
We've got, um, danger zones around the bus.
Uh, the front of the bus, extremely dangerous.
The, um,
I'm looking at a picture here.
If you go around passenger side for lack of a better word, the bus driver can't see well there, right?
Is that the blind spot?
Yeah.
If you ever watch a bus stop, you're going to notice that they've got mirrors, and many of them now have a sweep arm on the front.
I don't know if that's legally required.
but they now have the sweep arm that goes on the front of the bus, that big arm that just swings out in front of the bus, and it's designed to make kids go around it.
So parents need to work with their kids to know those danger zones around it.
If you're too close to the front of the bus, obviously the driver can't see you because they're elevated in the air, and if a child were to go under or over that arm, they could be run over by the bus, which unfortunately has happened in some areas.
The other areas to consider is that you don't cross the street until the driver waves you forward.
So that way they know the cars behind have stopped or the ones in front.
So they're monitoring so the kids can get across safely.
You know what we're talking about?
Little kids that are excited.
They don't have the sense.
They're like, I gotta get home.
And then they run.
And then there's a tragedy.
Yeah.
They don't wait for the bus driver to wave them.
Some kids might.
Well, for the little kids, they're so excited to go home.
Kindergarten kids, first grade kids, just want to get home and get out of there.
And I see it all the time when I see them just except running across the street.
And once they start, I mean, you can't stop them.
Let's talk about the flashing lights because everybody's always confused.
I got amber lights, the yellow lights, and I got the red flashing lights.
What are those?
So the amber lights means that the driver is about to come to a stop.
So if you're driving near that, you should be prepared to
stop as well.
And the red ones are the ones when they've come to a complete stop.
And that's when the door opens and the crossing gate in the front comes out.
But the stop sign comes out.
The stop sign comes out as
well.
Yeah, when I was a kid, they didn't have the stop sign.
I don't think they have the flashing lights.
I'm trying to think.
And you're supposed to stop.
You're not supposed to go slowly around the bus.
You're supposed to stop.
And I see so many people just go right through there and
That's when you take the risk of hitting a kid.
And if you do, your life will never be the same again.
It's all over for you.
And what's the penalty for that, by the way?
I want to say it's a steep penalty.
I don't know the exact amount off the top of my head.
But I do know that a lot of the buses, they have cameras in the buses so that it records the front.
So it will record the plate.
And that's how the driver is able to notify the company who then can notify law enforcement.
Look at that.
High tech.
Yeah.
Some of the newer stop arms have cameras right on the stop arm.
So as it extends, the camera can actually see who's coming and going past it.
You know, it's hard enough to be a school bus driver with, you know, 80 screaming to a how many?
50 kids screaming in the bus, running around, throwing things at each other.
Then you got to pay attention to the nuts on the road who don't stop.
I mean, I can never do that.
It's so much distraction on a bus, especially with little kids.
And I think that that's something that's important to remember for all of the parents and all of our community.
Our drivers are amazing.
They have dedicated their life and their career to supporting our students and getting them to and from school in as safe and as efficient manner as possible.
And our drivers all need to be commended exceedingly.
We're talking about school bus safety this morning.
We're seeing County Traffic Safety Commission, and we have two guests with us, John Strack, who is supervisor of transportation, and Spector Nathan Lamb from the State Patrol.
And Tom Ditter is here.
He's the guy who puts us all together for us every month.
All right, let's talk about, this is difficult for kids to think about.
They should walk a straight, little kids should walk a straight line and move at least 10 feet away from the bus.
We're talking about kindergartners.
They're gonna know what 10 feet is in front of the bus.
I know in ideal situations, you have a high schooler, you can talk to them about it, they would know.
How do you convince a little kid who's a kindergartner to get off the bus and walk 10 feet before crossing in front of the school bus?
Well, a lot of this comes down to both the schools as well as the people and the children's lives, helping them learn proper school bus safety.
Like when you're waiting for a school bus, you should be at least
you know, six to 10 feet away from the curb.
Why?
Because kids do kid things and you don't want to get pushed into the road.
You don't want a child to get harmed.
The other thing is, is that you've got snow plows in Wisconsin that are going to come by and you're going to have snow hills or things that you could slide down and go fall and go under a bus or under a car while you're waiting.
So both the family as well as the school work with the kids to try to reinforce those behaviors.
Well, let me ask you.
Do they ever take a school bus to the school and have kids educated right there on the ground while the teachers are there?
Would a station every school bus there and take them off and show how to walk in front of a bus?
I would like to say yes.
However, during the first weeks of school, the school bus drivers will talk to the kids about school bus safety and things along those lines.
We have approximately 126 to 128 school buses on the road at any given time.
And we are busing students from approximately 545, 6 o'clock in the morning until approximately 6 o'clock at night.
They go in three shifts in the morning, two midday runs, and then three more in the afternoon.
So in smaller communities, sometimes you can have
a bus come to your school and just sit there for an afternoon or a day to go over that.
Whereas we do it with the kids as they're getting on and getting off the buses during those first weeks of school.
I knew someone who drove a bus, school bus.
And one of her routes was to sit there, right, where Hardy's is.
Just park the bus and wait for some bus driver to call.
My bus broke down and then she moves in.
They still do that?
Yes, we call them standby drivers.
And if there is an issue with mechanical malfunction or if there's been an accident in or around the bus where they are now stopped and we have to transfer students from one bus to another, we have standbys available.
Otherwise it could take an exceedingly long time to get a replacement bus to that.
Let's talk about some of the things on the list here.
A drawing out.
I'm going to give me your paper.
They can borrow your paper.
I'm trying to read off a screen and it's hard for me to do it.
I didn't go to radio school for that.
All right.
A driver of a vehicle meeting from either direction to stop school bus with flashing red lights may not proceed until the flashing red lights have stopped.
There is an exception to that.
If there's a boulevard like a median and you're coming from the opposite direction, do or don't have to stop.
If it's a, yeah, if there's a curb median and you're on the opposite side, you do not have to stop when the red lights are flashing.
Yeah, because
Sometimes I'll drive down and I'll see there's the divider in the road, but it's a real concrete.
It's not just dots on the road.
It's a real divider.
And my wife says, you better stop.
I said, I don't think I have to.
I'll stop anyway sometimes because kids are still darting across the street.
But people get confused on that boulevard type
thing.
Well, yeah, if there's painted lines, easy way to think about it is there's painted lines between you and the other side of the road.
You need to stop.
Right.
If there's not, if it's a physical
Object in the way.
Yeah, you don't have to stop on the opposite side of the road at that
point.
Yeah, it says your vehicle driving is proceeding in the opposite direction under the Byte of the Highway.
Need not stop for a school bus with flashing red lights.
A divided highway is a highway with a permanent structure preventing vehicles from crossing one side to another.
And that's the Boulevard we talked about.
School bus loading areas where the bus is entirely off the traveled portion of the road.
Drivers need to stop in residential or business districts.
where students or other authorized passengers are being loaded or unloaded, like cargo.
Very precious
cargo.
That's what my father used to say when my daughter was born.
She goes, keep in mind, you have the most precious cargo in the backseat of your car.
You think you drove carefully before, drive extra careful now.
A special education bus on a one-way street where sidewalks and curbs are.
laid out there.
That's another thing when it comes to special ed buses.
I mean you're dealing with kids that just don't know the rules sometimes and it's hard to explain it to them.
Do they have regular school buses for special ed kids or are they special school buses?
It depends on the need of the student.
We have buses that are designed to
For students who have physical disabilities, we have wheelchair buses that will support the services of getting a wheelchair student there, or if a student needs some form of restraint, everything from a harness to a star seat.
We do have buses that are designed to do that.
You know, I just I know at the beginning of the school year, kids are excited.
They're running all over the place.
You can't stop them.
Maybe a little kids.
You just the people you gotta stop when you see if these red flashing lights in that stop sign doesn't mean slow down Well, you know, I was in a hurry.
I don't care if you're in a hurry You're gonna hit some kid and then there's gonna be a tragedy in your life will never be the same again So school bus drivers now what did they practice now?
They do their routes.
How does that work?
Yes, they will start getting out and practicing the routes and getting their runs done so that that way they They know approximate timing we can check that the routes are gonna
do what we need them to do.
So it's a good time.
They will not run their red lights or their stop arms during practice runs, however, because we're not going to stop traffic if it's not needed.
But yes, you're going to start seeing them out and about.
The other thing is, now you say they have group stops.
What about the parent yelling, hold it, he's almost ready, hold it, he's just finishing his breakfast, hold it.
And they know that happens.
Yes.
And unfortunately, it's difficult.
We ask all parents to be out with their students or their students just to be out at the bus 10 minutes prior to the bus's arrival time.
Because this way, when the bus stops, we can load the kids on as quickly as possible so we can go get the other students.
Everybody says, well, the bus saw my child running and that's actually not the case.
The driver's not looking in the mirrors.
to see if somebody's running late.
They're looking in the mirrors to see what hazards exist and to begin safely operating that vehicle.
What if you have a troublesome kid on the bus?
They still kick them
off?
They can.
Not right at that moment.
They're not going to open the door and release them out into the wild.
The
idea is
that we will work with the parents.
We will work with the school to have a better behavioral outcome.
I'm not dating myself too much, but I remember I'll leave it to Beaver.
Beaver got kicked off the bus for starting a fight which he didn't start.
And he had to write letters of apology to get back on the bus.
They still do that?
Which one?
The letters of apology?
How do you get your kid back on the bus?
Well, normally it depends.
Because normally we will end up, the schools will meet with the parent to discuss it.
The school bus is in...
Our area are considered an extension of the classroom.
So any severe behavioral situations really are dealt with the principle of the student.
They also have Knowledge of the student and work with them on a daily basis also.
So the administration the building will work with the parent to try to help Garner a better behavior on the bus if it extends over a period of time you you can see short suspensions school bus is a privilege not
not an absolute right in the sense that if you continue to cause a disruption, which can become a safety issue for others, that you can receive a short-term suspension or up to, you know, the remainder of the year, depending on
severity.
Thank you for setting this up for us.
I do appreciate it.
Thank you for setting that up for us.
I do appreciate it, my friend.
Oh, you're very welcome.
I wanted to thank a couple of people who actually were behind this as well.
Trooper Matt Barlar.
suggested it after one of our traffic safety meetings, then Sergeant Joel Dashak from the State Patrol recruited Inspector Lam here.
So thank you and thank you both gentlemen for appearing today.
Your knowledge is wonderful.
Great.
And I thank you both as well.
I thank for schlepping in so early.
I know it's tough getting up in the morning to come in here and do appreciate it.
John Strack, Supervisor of Transportation, Inspector Nathan Lam.
of the Wisconsin State Patrol, keeping those school buses tipped up.
We're not going to let anything slip through, drivers, mechanical equipment.
We're going to make sure it's safe, right?
Yes,
sir.
And get the seal of approval.
Thank you very much, guys, for coming in.
Did we know what's next month or not yet?
Oh, what do we have next month?
What do we
have?
Next month's going to be railroad safety.
And I'm going to talk to you.
We're going to shift the Liz Adams, who's the acting director for emergency management.
She'll be in hopefully a little bit later in September.
At that time, I'll tell you my story now.
I used to go to school every day to cross the tracks.
What do you know this story?
Thank you guys for coming in this morning.
I do appreciate it.
And if anybody wants to see what we talked about, you can go online.
Just Google Racine County, staying safe, and it pops right up.
Everything we've talked about for the full year is on there.
The last one will be school bus safety.
School bus safety.
I mean, these are little kids.
You got to be aware of them, especially at the beginning of the school year when they're all excited, okay?