Is Your School Bus Stop Safe?

In a previous post, I talked about registered sex offenders that may live near your child’s bus stop "Are There Sex Offenders Near My Child's School Bus Stop". This is important to know, but it doesn’t mention other threats that may exist for your children.

1. Crowded Stops.  We all have perfectly behaved students, right?  After reality sets in, we can clearly see that not all students behave themselves properly.  Bus stops are often un-chaperoned.  When children are left alone, they sometimes can get rowdy.  Larger groups of unsupervised students tend to have more problems than smaller groups.  If your child is waiting for a bus with a large group of students and there are disciplinary problems, you should contact your school and accompany your child to the bus stop until the problem is resolved.
2. Heavy Traffic. America is a country of automobiles.  Traffic accidents can occur anywhere and at any time.  Statistically, the more traffic there is on a road, the more likely there will be an accident.  If your child is waiting for the bus on a busy road, they are more likely to be involved in a traffic accident than if they were waiting on a less busy road.  The amount of traffic on a road cannot be changed, but there are still things you can do to alleviate this problem.  It may be possible for your school district to move the location of the bus stop to a safer location, or you could accompany your child to the bus stop.
3. External threats (like drug activity).  There may be known locations in your school district where you wouldn’t want your children to wait for a school bus, or depart from a school bus.  If there are external (non-school related) dangers at your child’s bus stop, you should contact the school to see if the bus stop can be moved.  You can also call law enforcement to see if there are steps they can take to remove the threats at your child’s bus stop.

You can use transportation management software like BusBoss to identify problematic locations within your school district.  Once the hazardous locations are identified, BusBoss will notify you if there are students that are assigned to stops within the hazardous areas.

Regardless of the threat that exists at your child’s stop, it is important that parents, students, and school district administrators are made aware of the problem.  There are usually steps that can be taken to reduce or eliminate the risk.  Our children are worth the effort!