Children and the bus bureacrats

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A couple of kids were left on a school bus.

They forgot to get off at their kindergarten. The bus driver did not check that all children had left the bus. The kids were left in the bus all day, until the driver returned for his afternoon school run.

Bethany Hiatt, education editor for The West Australian, reported on the incident (School bus contracts must be child-proof, 28 Dec 2011). She wrote:

His [a parent's] point was simple: the policies are sound, the penalties in place seem adequate, but drivers do not seem to be aware of them.

I'm sure that the drivers do know of their responsibilities. What is lacking is the occasional reminder of what they need to do.

It doesn't happen often, that children are left, forgotten, on a school bus. Yet even not often is too often. So school bus services manager John Bailly wrote a reminder letter to all bus contractors.

And that is a key problem with the process.

Bailly wrote... well... a lot. I don't know how much he actually wrote. Hiatt's article quotes perhaps 8 column centimetres of Bailly's letter to contractors. Here is one extract, as quoted:

In all cases, these incidents would not have occurred if the driver had got out of his or her seat at the end of the school run and had actually walked up and down the bus aisle and checked all the seats.

Hiatt also reports that Bailly said -- presumably in his letter to bus contractors, that "leaving a young child on a school bus was viewed by the Government as a serious breach of contract, so errant operators would have to show why their school bus contract should not be terminated."

Are you with me so far?

Or have you fallen asleep due to the long-winded and boring extracts from Bailly's letter...

Imagine you are a school bus driver

Put yourself in the place of a school bus driver. Are you a child-molesting, psychotic sadist? Do you enjoy the power of locking small children into stifling hot enclosed spaces? Probably not.

I would imagine that most school bus drivers are reasonable human beings. They have a job to do and they do it. And, like everyone, they need a simple process that works -- and occasional reminders, to follow the process.

Some head office bureaucrat sees a possible problem in the bus driver process. He doesn't contact you, the bus driver. He sends a letter to your employer. Your employer has never driven a bus in his life. Certainly not a school bus.

The bureaucrat's letter is several pages long.

The letter begins with a series of past incidents. Your employer skims, thinks, never happened here...

The letter continues, with a statement that, "The number of incidents to date reflects that there is nearly one incident per year. This is unacceptable."

Yeah, yeah, thinks your employer, the bus run contractor, Of course it's unacceptable... Get to the point...

By the second page -- or perhaps by the third -- the bureaucrat gets, almost, to the point: "... show why their school bus contract should not be terminated."

Terminated?! thinks the contractor. That's serious. And so the contractor mentions the letter to a couple of the drivers. Or pins it up on a board in the office -- which no bus driver ever visits -- with a red circle round, "terminated".

A keen (and rich) contractor may copy the letter and post it to each of the bus drivers.

Which is where you -- the bus driver -- get back into the story...

You skim the letter.

Bureaucratic words, lots of them.

Convoluted sentences.

No clear point.

No idea what you're meant to do about it...

So you forget about it.

After all, you know that you are a careful bus driver.

What should be done?

Send a letter to the school bus contractor. Write simply, Please pass the attached to each of your bus drivers. (See? A simple letter, it's clear what is required, the required action can be done, quickly.)

The attached letter -- to be sent to each bus driver -- says: Remember, after each trip, walk down the bus and make sure that no children have been left behind. This letter is in large print. It can be read -- and understood -- quickly. It can even be pinned up in the bus -- by the driver, where the driver can see it -- as a regular reminder.

Keep the message simple.

No driver wants to leave children locked in their bus.

A simple reminder is needed.

Use just a few words. Few enough that they will be read. And understood.

I would bet that the drivers are happy to follow a simple and worthwhile step in their daily process. They may just need an occasional -- brief -- reminder.

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Oh, and remember that Bailly's long letter included the threat to the contractor, "... show why their school bus contract should not be terminated"?

Well... the bus driver "was stood down".

Independent thinking & independent analysis of your problems. Agamedes Consulting: Support for your thought. email nick leth at gmail dot com