LEE COUNTY, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 School districts across Southwest Florida have safety measures in place to keep students safe when they’re on the bus.<\/p>\n
School buses are among some of the safest vehicles on the road according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration because less than 1% of all traffic fatalities involve children on school transportation vehicles.<\/p>\n
Charlotte County School District has equipped their school buses with seatbelts since 2018. The 3-point seatbelts are in back rows, but in the front there are 5-point seatbelts for younger and smaller students.<\/p>\n
Rochelle Pitts, a mom with students from kindergarten to high school, says she encourages her students to wear seatbelts on the bus.<\/p>\n
“I think the busses have seat belts. My children are instructed to use them. Do they actually? I don’t know. Should that be enforced? Absolutely, it’s common sense,” Pitts said.<\/p>\n
Lee County School District provides yearly training on school bus safety protocols for students and twice-daily reminders as they board the bus in the morning and board again in the afternoon on the way home. The district also provides reminders on where to find emergency exits.<\/p>\n
Pitts also said she uses the Lee County School District’s app to be able to follow and communicate with her children when they are riding the bus to school. She mentioned the app that they use can be helpful, but sometimes the location isn’t accurate.<\/p>\n
“The app that we’re using is ‘Where’s the bus’, and it basically just tells you when they’ve clocked in to the bus or when they’ve arrived on the bus. And it’s really good because it’ll give you the date and time, let you know they’ve gotten there. But then it’s also not great sometimes because it’ll say that yeah, they’re supposed to be there at 9 o’clock and they get there at 9:30,” Pitts added.<\/p>\n
Charlotte County School District says their students participate in biannual emergency bus training, including front and rear door evacuations.<\/p>\n
All Lee County, Charlotte County, DeSoto County and Collier County school buses are equipped with seatbelts.<\/p>\n
Collier County school bus evacuation drills are conducted twice each year in the school bus loop at the schools they serve. Students and parents receive a yellow School Bus Registration Card at the beginning of each school year that outlines important safety expectations and procedures for riding a school bus.<\/p>\n
DeSoto County students participate in school bus safety training twice each school year through bus evacuation drills conducted at each school. During these drills, students learn important safety procedures, including how to safely evacuate the bus in an emergency, proper rider expectations and how to respond to instructions from the bus driver and school staff.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
If a crash were to happen, each district has protocols in place to respond and notify parents. Lee County notifies parents as soon as possible, and a transportation safety team will respond. A school administrator will respond if the situation warrants.<\/p>\n
Charlotte County uses ParentSquare to quickly communicate with the parents of students on board a bus. School and district administration are immediately notified and head to the scene.<\/p>\n
DeSoto County works with first responders and district personnel to assess the situation, ensure students receive any necessary medical attention and accurately identify all students involved. Parents and guardians are notified as soon as possible once student identities and circumstances have been confirmed.<\/p>\n
Collier County’s first priority during any emergency is determining whether there are injuries and ensuring the safety of all students. Depending on the nature and severity of the situation, parents may be notified through a phone call, district message or in-person communication.<\/p>\n
Two weeks from now is the start of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration School Bus Safety Week. The administration encourages drivers to watch for not only school buses but also students walking to get on and off the bus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LEE COUNTY, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 School districts across Southwest Florida have safety measures in place to keep students…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[2674,15639,209,211,210,853,165884,5926,7084,28,356,10632,33278,165880,15719,7281,165883,165882,1521,41150,165881],"class_list":["post-419857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-bus","tag-bus-driver","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-charlotte-county","tag-charlotte-county-school-district","tag-collier-county","tag-desoto-county","tag-florida","tag-lee-county","tag-lee-county-school-district","tag-national-highway-traffic-safety-administration","tag-rochelle-pitts","tag-school-administrator","tag-school-bus","tag-school-bus-safety-protocols","tag-school-transportation-vehicles","tag-southwest-florida","tag-student-transport","tag-transportation-safety-team"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}