ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. – While St. Johns County students don't return to class until next Thursday, the district's school buses began rolling early Friday morning.
Al Pantano, the county's transportation director, said bus operators have been going through intensive training that began by running them through a set of scenarios on a test track. They released them on the roads of St. Johns County Friday morning to learn their routes and locate each bus stop.
During these training runs, buses are to stop with signals and stop arms activated, open the doors and simulate loading students at each respective stop. This will help estimate travel times for each route.
The test runs were conducted throughout the county from 5:30 to 10 a.m. Friday.
New this year are a series of measures to help kindergarten students to use buses safety. They make up about 1,000 of St. Johns County's school bus riders.
“Those children have not ridden school buses before, and they’re a vulnerable population," Pantano said.
Kindergartners will be allowed to load the buses first and the district will use color-coded, animal-coded system to help them sort through and identify them with their assigned buses.
““We will put tags on the backpacks. It’s the orange kitties, and on the side of the bus there’ll be a placard that will be the orange kitty, and so it's correlating the backpack band to the bus," Pantano said. "Of course, we'll do that for all of the buses and we are very confident that'll work. Because we piloted it last year.”
Pantano said drivers and buses will be at the elementary and K-8 schools Tuesday and Wednesday to so parents and students will be able to meet one-on-one with their bus drivers and build connections prior to the first day of school.
St. Johns County is also implementing a pilot program this year, putting supplemental lighting systems on the buses. High-intensity, LED lights will be placed at the grill level so other motorists will see the lights more clearly.
Pantano said the state of Iowa added this lighting several years ago after some tragic accidents.
Also to improve safety, all St. Johns County are equipped with seat belts.
