A longtime school bus safety training provider is expanding its catalog with a new product aimed not at drivers, but at the people who coach them.

The School Bus Safety Company (SBSC) has launched a Safety Leadership course, a two-hour course designed to help transportation supervisors and managers build safety habits through consistent, behavior-based training.

The program is now being used by a growing list of contractors and districts across the industry, according to the company's founder and president, Jeff Cassell. The course is built around a simple premise, that safe operations depend on automatic habits, not just rules.

“NORMS are the way people act, automatically, without thinking,” Cassell says. “If you can instill into the drivers the desired NORMS, like maintaining a four-second following distance, they will automatically operate safely.”

Reinforcing Safety NORMS Through Leadership

SBSC has identified 22 core NORMS for school bus operations, practices the company has taught for nearly 20 years and embedded in its Safety Management System materials.

What’s new in the Safety Leadership program is how those NORMS are reinforced. The course trains leaders to use the “ABC model” of human behavior, which is categorized as antecedents, behaviors, and consequences, to shape safe decisions from day one.

In practice, that means setting expectations at hiring, repeating them during onboarding and behind-the-wheel training, and consistently cueing and rewarding safe actions until they become routine. Cassell describes these “formalized antecedents” as the missing piece in many safety programs, helping prevent unsafe habits before they harden into culture.

The Safety Leadership course also plugs into SBSC’s wider safety ecosystem, including its “Trifecta of Safety” framework and a Safety Reminder Series of short, five to eight-minute refresher videos that reinforce required NORMS year-round. Cassell said the company can expand that library as new operational risks or technologies emerge, keeping training continuous rather than one-and-done.

What Fleets Are Saying About Safety Leadership

Early feedback suggests the approach is resonating. Landmark Student Transportation rated the Safety Leadership program a 9.7 out of 10, noting that it reinforces safety expectations across an organization. 

Student Transportation of America reported overwhelmingly positive internal reviews after testing the course with operational staff, with most participants rating it at the top of the scale and recommending a systemwide rollout.

Additional reviews from safety leaders described the program as current, relevant, and practical for supervisors who need to consistently coach safe performance, not just correct problems after the fact.

With more fleets facing driver shortages, rising claims costs, and increasing public scrutiny, SBSC is positioning the Safety Leadership program to standardize safe behavior across locations and reduce incidents through proactive coaching. The company noted that their legacy NORMS-based training is used by large contractors and is intended to ensure frontline leaders have the tools to sustain those behaviors long after the initial training period.

The intent is in the vision: Do it right the first time, every time.

Learn more here, or fill out a course preview request.