When employees enjoy the industry in which they work, an opportunity to advance their career will be welcomed with open arms. Nowhere is this more true than in pupil transportation.

“Most of the people who attend the program are hungry for knowledge,” says Linda Farbry, director of Fairfax County (Va.) Public Schools’ Office of Transportation Services, of the district’s Transportation Academy, a program for prospective entry-level supervisors and bus drivers who are interested in learning about supervision. “Many have no education past their high school years, and they love every minute of the program.”

These types of opportunities not only enhance employees’ professional portfolios, they benefit the operation.

“It provides continuity and growth within the operation,” says Frank Labrecque, transportation director at Newport News (Va.) Public Schools (NNPS). “It also helps with retention. Offering positions where people can move up in a relatively short period of time keeps them motivated.”

Many districts and industry organizations are stepping up and giving drivers resources to engender this motivation.

Focusing on supervisor training
During Fairfax County Public Schools’ Transportation Academy, 20 drivers spend five weeks with several instructors — one who teaches the group about Microsoft Office Suite and the district’s routing program, Mapnet, and another who teaches grammar and writing. The third instructor works with attendees on managerial issues, such as leadership and team building.

Farbry says the district’s Office of Adult and Community Education contracts with instructors. When preparing for the Transportation Academy’s inaugural session, staff from both offices met and discussed the transportation staff’s needs. The Office of Adult and Community Education then selected the appropriate instructors.

In addition to working with instructors, the drivers generate a project that addresses a problem in pupil transportation and then present it to Farbry and the district’s chief operating officer. (For a week-by-week breakdown of the Transportation Academy agenda and assignments, see the January 2008 issue, pg. 11.)

When applications become available, a notice is posted in the district’s transportation newsletter. Drivers and driver supervisors also receive a memo that outlines selection criteria and invites them to apply.

“Any entry-level supervisor who has not already participated in the Academy is required to attend within the next two summers,” Farbry says.

Offering multiple career paths satisfies employees
Labrecque has created comprehensive and varied career paths within his department that enable bus drivers to work their way up to transportation supervisor. To help them prepare, NNPS offers free online courses, annual in-house training, seminars and character development workshops. The online courses train participants in programs such as Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and the district’s routing and scheduling software, EDULOG. The seminars often focus on customer service and leadership.

From the district’s 334 entry-level bus driver positions, employees can advance to a variety of higher-level jobs, including bus attendant, master driver, key driver, area key driver, dispatcher, routing and scheduling specialist, behind-the-wheel trainer and master trainer. There are also several options that allow employees to work simultaneously as a bus driver and a dispatch assistant, field trip manager assistant, shop assistant, trainer assistant or EDULOG assistant.

Labrecque says this setup works well regardless of an employee’s ultimate career goal. “You don’t have to come to NNPS and think that there aren’t opportunities for people who want to move up but want to remain a bus driver,” he says. “You can apply for the master driver or bus attendant positions.”

Furthermore, the area key driver position opens many doors in the pupil transportation world. “Once you’re an area key, you can pretty much go into any position in transportation,” Labrecque says.

Driver training as a stepping stone
The positions offered to NNPS drivers are similar to those offered at other districts. At Washoe County School District (WCSD) in Reno, Nev., Margo Medeiros-Myers, assistant director of the transportation department’s training and field operations, says job descriptions for available positions are posted and hands-on training is offered to applicants.

A large portion of the department’s career advancement opportunities is its instructor evaluator positions. WCSD has three types: full-time behind-the-wheel instructor evaluators; part-time instructor evaluators, who teach behind- the-wheel training and work as bus drivers; and classroom instructor evaluators, who teach the classroom portion of behind-the-wheel training.

Medeiros-Myers says applicants must meet stringent state-mandated guidelines to be considered for these positions, including having two years of experience, retaking the CDL test and scoring at least 90 percent, and engaging in behind-the-wheel training with a current trainer.

Once applicants become instructor evaluators, they must take the state certification test annually.

At Amphitheater Public Schools in Tucson, Ariz., Transportation Director Marc Lappitt says becoming a driver trainer is the most direct way for a driver to move up. The district employs three driver trainers, each of whom must be state-certified and three years accident-free to be considered for the position.

{+PAGEBREAK+} District workshops, state programs are invaluable
Brevard Public Schools in Viera, Fla., offers its employees a series of educational leadership workshops, which Transportation Director Mike Connors encourages his staff to attend, particularly when they become routing specialists and assistant transportation supervisors.

Connors says the workshops address such issues as customer service, management and public speaking. Another — Bargaining 101 — is popular among his bus drivers. “They learn negotiation skills from this workshop and also about the rights of union members and the entire union process,” he explains.

The workshops are held in a classroom and most are between four and eight hours in length. Upon completion, participants receive a certificate.

Connors also sends his employees to a three-day series of training programs and workshops organized by the state Department of Education in the spring. They are open to all Florida school districts and are geared toward routing specialists, driver trainers and route coordinators who want to receive in-depth training on the “nuts and bolts” of pupil transportation.

The Florida Association for Pupil Transportation has also played an integral role in enhancing Brevard employees’ careers. Connors says the association offers training courses similar to those offered by the National Association for Pupil Transportation (NAPT). “The last couple of years, we’ve also offered a course called Transportation 101, where routing specialists and coordinators can learn more about the transportation process to develop their skills,” Connors adds.

Utilizing industry resources
NAPT offers 38 courses as part of its Professional Development Series (PDS) that focus on such topics as leadership and management, effective team communication and routing and scheduling. The courses have been instrumental in helping transportation team members increase their knowledge.

Labrecque, for instance, recently sent three of his transportation supervisors to Virginia’s state association conference to take several PDS courses, and he plans to send them to additional conferences to continue with the series. He wants all six of his supervisors to become nationally certified.

Moreover, Steve Kalmes, transportation director at Anchorage (Alaska) School District, is part of a committee working to post PDS course material online so individuals who cannot attend national or state conferences can take them.

Anchorage School District transportation employees are groomed for positions in dispatch, behind-the-wheel training and management through on-the-job training. The district’s state-certified trainers, for example, train its school bus drivers and its behind- the-wheel trainers.

Once employees move into management, Kalmes also sends them to conferences out of state. “I send folks to national conferences to do some networking and professional development there,” he says. “It gives them an idea of what goes on in transportation outside of our operation.”

Pursuing higher education
NAPT also helped Cook County School Bus Inc.’s Assistant Operations Manager Kathy Gorecki secure her current job.

Last year, Gorecki, then a school bus driver, wanted to move into a different area of pupil transportation. NAPT officials directed her to Mohawk Valley Community College (MVCC), in Utica and Rome, N.Y., which offers the School Transportation Management Certificate program. (For details on Gorecki’s introduction to this program, see the Sept. 2007 issue, pg. 52.)

MVCC’s program comprises a series of nine courses that cover economics, business math, management principals, supervisory management, English composition, computer literacy, general psychology and transportation operations.

In May, Gorecki completed her fifth online course and has been engaging in on-the-job training at Cook County School Bus in Arlington Heights, Ill., where she is responsible for 65 drivers and attendants. “It’s been rough, but I don’t feel it’s anything I can’t handle,” she says.

Gorecki credits this to the skills she has developed by taking MVCC’s program, saying that it has given her a lot of practical life experience.

In one of the transportation operations courses, Gorecki and her classmates organized a hypothetical music festival. They had to coordinate everything from the venue to the music to the transportation. Gorecki says the project facilitated planning and teamwork among the students — necessities in running a transportation office.

In another course, the students researched job openings in their field and composed a resumé and cover letter. Gorecki says this taught her what to look for when talking to applicants and reviewing their employment history.

Gorecki’s progression from bus driver to assistant operations manager has been swift. When she began working for Cook County parent company Cook-Illinois Corp., she was placed at Westway Coach Inc., another of its subsidiaries, where she received management training for two months. She was then moved to Cook County School Bus, where she continued her management training. After working there for two months, she was promoted to assistant operations manager.

Gorecki has been told that it takes a full school year to be promoted to operations manager, so she doesn’t expect it to happen until September or October. “In the meantime, I’m pretty much in charge of the daily operations,” she says. “It’s been quite a transition from driving buses last September up to now.”

Doing double duty
Working in schools is another way for bus drivers to move forward in their career.

Horry County Schools in Conway, S.C., offers a mid-day program, in which drivers split their day between transporting students and working in the schools as clerks, cafeteria workers, secretaries, bookkeepers or custodians, making it easy to transition into full-time positions in these fields when they become available.

Moreover, Transportation Director Jim Wright says his department has established tiered advancement opportunities. In addition to offering driver trainer, assistant supervisor, area supervisor and fi eld supervisor positions, bus drivers can move up a pay grade by participating in the department’s special-education program and becoming a teacher’s aide. Drivers must have a two-year degree or take a ParaPro test to be considered for this position.

The department also has a bus aide program, where employees split time between driving a bus and working as an aide, and a program for substitute drivers that guarantees them full-time work. These employees transport students throughout the district, and they are sent to other districts as well.

Horry County Schools began its mid-day program in the early ’90s, and the transportation department expanded its tiered program in the past three to four years — something Wright is proud of. “In the old days, if you started as a driver, you were always a driver,” he says. “Now we have it set up where they can move up, and many of my drivers are excited about it.”