Problem Solved

As a private school we utilize the public schools bus routes. We have three bus routes that each have about twenty students that ride them. Our students are the first ones picked up and dropped off both in the morning before school and in the afternoon after school. In the morning there is a teacher on duty to supervise the bus students because they arrive earlier than the other students are allowed to arrive. After school there is a teacher who gets the students on to the bus and checking them off for safety reasons. I was, am, one of those teachers who was in charge of the bus duty after school. What I had to do was to check the students off on the corresponding bus sheets. Make sure that all the students that are supposed to be on the bus get on the correct bus. The problem is that the bus company was putting pressure on our principal and her in turn putting pressure on the teachers in charge of bus duty to get the students out and on the buses earlier because they were running late for their public school routes.

The principal started to help with getting the busses loaded. As the students were walking out the door she would yell out the names of the students and the teacher doing the bus duty would flip through the three pages of buses and find the students to check them off. This helped the students to get on the bus faster but the lists were not accurate because there were too many students running past and names being called out to get everyone. At faculty meetings it was discussed changing the time school starts or gets out in order to accommodate the bus students and bus company’s schedule.

I talked to one of the other teachers who does bus duty and we talked about why it was so hard to get the students out and on the buses in a timely manner (or by the time the buses needed to leave.) The biggest problem was flipping through the different pages to find the students on each bus. It was nearly impossible for someone new to it and still very difficult for those who knew which student got on which bus. We sat down together and put all the separate pages of bus lists on to one page. Instead of having to flip through pages all of the students are on one list. By doing this we save at least 5-10 minutes getting the buses loaded.