Transportation personnel at Greenville
(S.C.) County Schools have developed
an innovative special-needs
school bus evacuation program that
includes a color-coded system to help drivers
and aides identify the degree of each
student’s disability, resulting in a safer and
more efficient evacuation.
Special-Education Bus Supervisors Teena
Corwin and Judy Cox, along with Safety
Officers/Trainers Melanie MacDonald and
Sharon Evans, created the program as part
of an effort to offer more training for the district’s
bus drivers.
“We’ve been in the process of changing
the way we do our training,” Corwin says.
“In the past, our special-needs evacuation
program was treated as regular ed, and we
realized that it needed its own program.”
In the planning stages, Corwin, Cox, Mac-
Donald and Evans determined that they
wanted a program that would allow drivers
and aides to have a plan in mind for evacuating
students in an emergency.
“When we tried to figure out how we could
do this, we had already categorized the students
in our minds,” Corwin explains. “We
knew that a certain set of students needed
to be supervised at all times and that another
group didn’t, and a color-coded system
was the easiest way that we could categorize
them.”
Corwin says the color-coded system is
also more effective than basing the categorization
on the students’ disabilities.
“If a bus was turned over and there
were other people at the scene to help,
it’s faster to say, ‘Grab a hold of the students
in the red dot zone and stay with
them at all times,’ rather than trying to
describe their disability and saying that
they’re not capable of helping themselves,”
Corwin says.
School bus drivers and their supervisors
work together to decide which color
code (green, yellow or red) best describes
each student’s disability. Green
signifies that the child has a mild mental
disability, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity
disorder, or is mildly physically
disabled but can disembark the
bus without supervision. The student
may also help other students evacuate.
Yellow indicates that a student has
a disability that necessitates some assistance
in evacuating, such as being
blind or deaf or having a mild case of
Down syndrome.
Red signifies a student with a severe
disability who requires constant supervision
and assistance to evacuate the
bus. Students with autism, substantial
physical disabilities and severe behavioral
disorders fall into this category.
Once the students have been categorized
under one of these colors, red, yellow or green magnetic dots are
placed above the windows next to each
student’s seat. Each student’s name is
written on a magnet with a dry-erase
marker. If a student’s seat is moved,
his or her dot must be transferred to
the new seating location.
Pairing students with minor disabilities
whenever possible during an
emergency is encouraged to expedite
the evacuation process. “If you have
a child that is blind and another that
isn’t, they could get off the bus together
because they don’t need constant supervision,”
Corwin explains. “They are
capable of taking direction and following
through with it.”
Corwin, Cox, MacDonald and Evans
implemented their program on a
trial basis at the South Carolina special-
needs roadeo in January. Using
it helped two Greenville County
Schools’ driver and aide teams place
in the top three.
Corwin and her colleagues are now
implementing the program at the department.
Training classes are being
held for all of the special-needs school
bus drivers and aides, where they are
presented with the following scenario:
A school bus has been involved in a
rear-end collision, and the vehicle under
the back of the bus is on fire. The
bus driver and aide have two minutes to evacuate the bus before a loss of life
occurs. There is one wheelchair-bound
student on the bus, one autistic student,
a student who is blind and two
students who have mild learning and
behavioral disabilities.
Trainees act as these students during
the instruction session. They
board the bus, red, yellow or green
dots are placed above them, and their
disabilities are explained. The trainers
then demonstrate an evacuation of
the trainees.
During the demonstration, the driver
secures the bus, calls in the emergency,
hangs the radio out the window and
shuts down the engine to hinder the
spreading of the fire. Meanwhile, the
aide releases the wheelchair tiedowns.
The driver then folds out the lift and
readies it for a manual descent. While
the aide puts the wheelchair on the lift
and lowers it manually, the driver pairs
and evacuates the other students, keeping
in mind that students with a red dot
cannot be left alone. After the evacuation
is complete, the aide stays with the
students and the driver checks the bus.
Based on the department’s success at
the special-needs roadeo, Corwin believes
this program will immensely benefit its drivers, aides and the 800 special-needs
students they serve in a real
situation that requires a bus evacuation.
“Until we came up with this program,
we couldn’t make the two-minute
window,” Corwin says. “When
we did a bus evacuation for the state
roadeo last year, we always lost someone.
With this program, we’ve made
the two-minute mark every time, so
this is very good, life-saving training.”
In particular, Corwin says that determining
which students can and cannot
be left alone has been instrumental to
the program’s effectiveness.
“Initially, we just focused on getting
students off the bus, and we didn’t take
into consideration those that we’ve
now coded red,” she says. “When we
took these students off the bus [during
practice sessions], they ran away. Having
a plan has allowed us to safely
evacuate students within the two-minute
window.”
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