School bus communication a topic of concern

The ability of the school or a parent to be able to communicate with a bus driver for one reason or another is an important one, and the Grand Coulee Dam School District directors discussed the topic at their Jan. 27 meeting.

Former board director Brenda Covington spoke with the school board, following up on the topic she had also addressed at their Dec. 9 meeting when she was still on the board.

Back in December, Covington had mentioned a woman who was unable to reach a bus driver, and that the bus barn didn’t have phone numbers for the bus drivers.

Superintendent Paul Turner said at last week’s meeting that cell phones have been assigned to routes, rather than drivers, and that the school offices can text the drivers on those phones. Drivers can respond once they are safely pulled over.

The method has worked for contacting drivers in one or two instances in the past month or so, Turner said.

He said that meetings between transportation staff, administration, and secretaries have been being held every couple of weeks or so to raise any concerns or issues there may be, and how to improve them.

Turner said they are working on having working radios in the buses as well, and later told The Star that setting everything up will cost about $70,000.

“We are looking at the radio deal,” he said. “We actually have an [Federal Communications Commission] license already, we just have to identify how, and whose towers we can hook up to to implement radios, and look at purchasing them.”

The radio situation could be solved this spring sometime, said Turner, who invited Covington to go over communications details with him.

Turner told The Star that sometimes a student gets on the wrong bus, or maybe goes to play with a friend after getting off the bus instead of going home. The ability to communicate with the drivers is important in those situations in order to help locate a student.