Posted February 2025

WBS: The Need for Workplace Sensitivity Training for School Bus Drivers and School Bus Management

Here’s something to think about. The bare minimum for a schoolteacher to be granted permission to stand before 25 to 30 students as a certified teacher is for them to complete a bachelor’s degree. The bare minimum for school bus drivers to transport 60+ students on a rolling 16-ton, 35-foot school bus everyday is for them to hold a commercial driver’s license with the proper endorsements.

Fully certified schoolteachers are mandated to go to school for at least 4 years before anyone will allow them permission to hold a classroom on their own. School bus drivers train for two to three weeks on learning how to properly perform a pre-trip and post-trip inspection and how to safely maneuver the bus. Addressing one’s student population is pretty much OJT. One of these things is not like the other.

This concept is what I refer to as the “Warm Body in a Seat” model (WBS).

School districts have employed this model for years. I have worked in school districts where drivers tell stories of how they used to drive the school bus for their high school if they had a driver’s license back in the day. Smh.

This has been the prevailing model because school bus transportation is often seen as the red-headed stepchild of school districts. Not quite an afterthought, but definitely not the priority. School bus transportation is usually above the cafeteria workers but way below athletics. Anybody can do it.

Another concerning aspect of WBS concerns the mandate of the two primary parties. Drivers are required to drive the bus and to deliver the students. Management on the other hand is required to ensure that there is proper staffing for daily routes and to ensure all the students get picked up and dropped off safely. There is an intersection between the two, and it works fairly well most days.

But in those moments when a driver overtly identifies that they are in crisis mode, the mandate of management supersedes that of the driver. When a driver calls over the radio with a stressor (i.e., an out-of-control parent or student), management will attempt to empathize with a driver, but the ultimate objective is the delivery of the students. Separating students on a bus or attempting to return to a school are options, but in real time to a driver who is not able to employ critical thinking skills and courage, these options are exacerbating.

There isn’t any real way of deescalating a scenario on a school bus like in office space encounters. There are also no options for a driver to decompress or compartmentalize after returning from that trip. Drivers simply go home then come back for the next route.

Driver mental wellness is often driven through third-party entities (i.e., Employee Assistance Programs). While viable, the services can be seen as detached or shallow, like someone from outside of a driver’s experiences attempting to relate.

Maybe we should only hire drivers with college degrees. In theory, that sounds plausible, but in reality, there is very little data to substantiate this notion. Besides, a college degree today is not a consistent metric to determine a driver’s mental acuity, nor management’s ability to gauge or facilitate driver acuity for that matter.

I query, is school bus management trained to recognize or facilitate a driver in crisis?

Most school bus management is not degreed and does not hold any degree or certification in behavior studies. School bus management has most often been someone who has been with bus transportation over the years and has risen through the ranks who knows enough about how the daily operations work well enough to take on more responsibilities and make a little more money. A bit of meritocracy but it has been an accepted practice. Another aspect of WBS.

Over the last 30+ years, since higher standards were created for upper management, nepotism has played a major role in the delegation of authority. But that’s a different story for a different time. I digress.

The question was, are supervisors and management trained to properly facilitate a driver in crisis, in real time? The simple answer, no. Historically, this is simply not how school bus transportation has functioned. Just drive the bus. That’s your job.

And thus, the WBS theory is allowed to fester, and driver turnover continues to plague school bus systems.

Seve Adigun, Executive Director, TeamDriveSAFE, [email protected]

Seve Adigun is a 30-year veteran of passenger transportation and an organizational behavioral management analyst and consultant. He is the creator of Drivertude: From the Pavement to the People, Advocacy for Passenger Transportation Professionals.