Guiding the Way in School Transportation Video Cameras Provide Safeguards Not Only for Students, but Drivers as Well ost everyone has seen video from a school bus on the national news. “Sometimes it’s used to provide evidence of passenger misconduct, especially bullying,” says Scott Allen, general manager of TransPar’s St. Louis group. “And sometimes it shows it’s the driver who has violated the rules. Either way, it’s a supervisor’s eyes and ears on the bus.” Onboard signs warn students and drivers that they are being recorded, and that alone can be a deterrent. Allen also noted something you probably didn’t know about cameras. “Now there are cameras mounted on the outside of a school bus to catch drivers who ignore a school bus’s flashing lights or stop arm,” he stated. Useful for Training Footage can also be used for driver training purposes and is often viewed randomly by transportation officials to monitor performance. “Videos are an excellent tool to evaluate, train and promote good safety habits,” Allen points out, “and it’s not uncommon to counsel a driver or even an attendant on proper practices based on what’s seen on a video.” It also helps when a driver is struggling with student management. Says Allen, “A trainer can use the video to instruct the driver in proper techniques to handle situa- tions.” The only downside is some drivers see this as big brother tactics to some extent. “It’s the end result that counts,” Allen concluded. Not Everyone Should Have Access But Allen issued a stern warning: “It’s important that districts have very strict policies as to who can view footage, for the privacy and protection of the students.” Typically, he says, it’s acceptable for FALL 2013 INSIDE: TransPar Engineers Tucson Turnaround . . . . . . . . . . 2 Consulting Gig Becomes Big Assignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 ValuNav Helps Districts Save Significant Dollars . . . . . . . 4 (continued on page 2) Manpower is Key to Performance O ne thing we’ve learned from expe- rience is districts with on-time performance issues are almost sure to have manpower issues. There are many factors that can impact on-time perfor- mance, but the fact is it almost always comes down to not having enough qualified drivers on the job at any given time. Safe, reliable transportation is a team effort. Drivers, trainers, mechanics, dispatchers and managers are all indis- pensable. When a shortage of drivers exists the team adjusts to meet the demands of the day. Should a mechanic have to drive, then maintenance is delayed. If a trainer drives, then training new drivers is delayed. Managers become dispatchers as everyone scrambles to cover open routes. As members of the staff are called upon to drive, the office can no longer operate properly. Response to patrons and princi- pals is slowed. Route adjustments wait for weekend or night attention. All this has a cost. Maintenance becomes more expensive as overtime makes up for a mechanic’s driving time. Or worse, main- tenance is deferred, which leads to major, expensive problems. First-year drivers are most likely to have accidents; chronic driver shortages mean a less experienced driver force. Ruth Newby M (continued on page 3)
Transcript
Guiding the Way in School Transportation
Video Cameras Provide Safeguards Not Only for Students, but Drivers as Well
ost everyone has seen video from a school
bus on the national news. “Sometimes it’s used to provide evidence of passenger misconduct, especially bullying,” says Scott Allen, general manager of TransPar’s St. Louis group. “And sometimes it shows it’s the driver who has violated the rules. Either way, it’s a supervisor’s eyes and ears on the bus.” Onboard signs warn students and drivers that they are being recorded, and that alone can be a deterrent.
Allen also noted something you probably didn’t know about cameras. “Now there are cameras mounted on the outside of a school bus to catch drivers who ignore a school bus’s fl ashing lights or stop arm,” he stated.
Useful for TrainingFootage can also be used for driver training purposes and is often viewed
randomly by transportation offi cials to monitor performance. “Videos are an excellent tool to evaluate, train and promote good safety habits,” Allen points out, “and it’s not uncommon to counsel a driver or even an attendant on proper practices based on what’s seen on a video.” It also helps when a driver is struggling with student management. Says Allen, “A trainer can use the video to instruct the driver in proper techniques to handle situa-tions.” The only downside is some drivers see this as big brother tactics to some extent. “It’s the end result that counts,” Allen concluded.
Not Everyone Should Have AccessBut Allen issued a stern warning: “It’s important that districts have
very strict policies as to who can view footage, for the privacy and protection of the students.” Typically, he says, it’s acceptable for
One thing we’ve learned from expe-rience is districts with on-time
performance issues are almost sure to have manpower issues. There are many factors that can impact on-time perfor-mance, but the fact is it almost always comes down to not having enough qualifi ed drivers on the job at any given time.
Safe, reliable transportation is a team effort. Drivers, trainers, mechanics, dispatchers and managers are all indis-pensable. When a shortage of drivers exists the team adjusts to meet the demands of the day. Should a mechanic have to drive, then maintenance is delayed. If a trainer drives, then training new drivers is delayed. Managers become dispatchers as everyone scrambles to cover open routes.
As members of the staff are called upon to drive, the offi ce can no longer operate properly. Response to patrons and princi-pals is slowed. Route adjustments wait for weekend or night attention.
All this has a cost. Maintenance becomes more expensive as overtime makes up for a mechanic’s driving time. Or worse, main-tenance is deferred, which leads to major, expensive problems. First-year drivers are most likely to have accidents; chronic driver shortages mean a less experienced driver force.
Ruth Newby
M
(continued on page 3)
2 TransPar Group � Navigator
hen TransPar employee Paul Larson arrived to serve as transportation director for the Tucson Unifi ed
School District, he faced a big challenge. In fact, several of them. Buses were not running on time, drivers were viewed as discourteous, staff was hard to reach and the district was running at a $17 million annual defi cit.
Larson worked with the district team to improve service levels and helped the district staff to fi nd signifi cant cost savings. In just a year and a half, the turnaround was dramatic. Performance numbers in the district survey of users jumped signifi cantly across the board. And for the fi rst time, more than 50 percent of users responded they were “very satisfi ed” with the district’s transportation system.
District COO Sees Continued ImprovementVivian Egbert, chief operations offi cer for the TUSD, said:
“TransPar’s ‘whatever it takes’ team approach has dramati-cally improved the service we provide, increased routing performance and effi ciencies, and set us on a positive trajectory. With confi dence in our partnership and the tools TransPar brings to our challenges, I know improvement in service and performance will continue.”
Egbert went on to say: “The changes and new practices intro-duced since Paul Larson began serving as our transportation director have been praised by principals and parents alike.”
How Did TransPar Do It?• New language was drafted for the new labor agreement
that focused on pay for time worked and other effi ciencies.• TransPar worked with the pre-K program staff to propose
changes to the school schedule that resulted in more than half a million dollars in savings.
• The fl eet is being “right-sized” so that large buses will not be operating on routes with small numbers of students. Soon small buses will replace big buses on low ridership routes, resulting in a $4,000 annual fuel savings per bus.
• GPS technology was recommended to help monitor paid route times and improve monitoring of actual stop times and bus arrival times.
• TransPar implanted key performance indicator tracking to provide quantitative measures of performance. Late buses, breakdowns, and driver and monitor absenteeism are tracked and reported on a daily basis. During the AIMS testing period, transportation on-time arrival and pickup improved to 99.6 percent.
• TUSD transportation operations offi ces at the central facility were remodeled to create a more open and profes-sional atmosphere. The transformation helped to improve communication and facilitate the teamwork necessary to maintain performance at a high level on a daily basis. �
TransPar Engineers Tucson TurnaroundLarson Partners With TUSD to Improve Service and Lower Costs
school administrators, students with administrators and safety or transportation managers to view video. “Parents and the public should not be allowed to view footage,” Allen stated, “unless the video can blur the images of other students. But even then, it’s not advisable.”
Allen says cameras have helped when dealing with issues, such as “who took what,” “who touched who,” “who had what,” and “who hit who.” But sometimes video doesn’t tell the whole story. “I remember a video clearly showing a student taking an item from her purse and swinging it at another female rider,” he recalls. But further investigation revealed “the first girl was being bullied on the bus and had finally just had enough.”
In another case Allen recalls, a transportation depart-ment received a report that a driver was speeding in a school zone consistently. “After viewing the tape,” Allen says, “speeding was confirmed and a few other concerns were noted. As a result, corrective counseling and training made the driver far more safety conscious.”
Allen says there is more safety technology on the horizon, and TransPar is always on the lookout for the next great thing. �
Video Cameras Provide Safeguards(continued from page 1) “It’s important that districts have very strict
policies as to who can view footage, for the privacy and protection of the students.”
www.transpar.com 3
Consulting GigBecomes Big Assignment TransPar’s DuPrey Making Things Hum in Philadelphia
irst impressions can mean a lot. When the Boston Consulting Group called on TransPar for transportation expertise in its evaluation
of the School District of Philadelphia, the district was so impressed it privatized its bus system and put TransPar specialist Francisco DuPrey in charge.
After just six weeks on the job, DuPrey, newly named general manager of the school district’s Department of Trans-portation, helped engineer an amazingly successful school startup for the sixth largest school district in the nation. Complaints from parents were down 60 percent from the previous year, and complaints from schools in the district declined noticeably.
“The fi rst thing we had to do when we got here was set up a plan with measur-able goals,” DuPrey said, “and to accomplish that we had to sit down with both the district’s transportation offi cials and those of many private contractors as well.”
Starting With the BasicsEven the most basic questions had to be answered. How many students need
to be transported on the fi rst day of school? After inspecting and repairing each bus as needed, how many would be available to do the job? How many qualifi ed drivers would be on hand? “We literally had to go to every one of the garages and count the buses and drivers that would be available,” DuPrey noted.
After a successful startup, there was still plenty of work to be done. “We had to improve the overall management of the department so it would become more effi cient, more productive and more cost-effective,” he said. “Account-ability was also a big issue so we created a monthly scorecard for our contractor partners to keep track of progress. We also do a quarterly report for the district that shows progress on a variety of metrics.”
Unnecessary Overtime Proves CostlyCostly overtime hours was another area that required immediate attention. “When
I got here, I found overtime was being used to complete routine day-to-day tasks. We decided to set production goals for work that had to be done during regular hours. That alone has saved the district some $800,000 in overtime costs,” noted DuPrey.
A variety of other cost-cutting measures were implemented by the district after DuPrey prepared and presented a comprehensive cost reduction plan itemizing 16 different strategies that addressed several different areas of transportation services. To date, that plan has saved the district more than $4 million.
He was quick to point out this was not just randomly slashing costs, but teaching the system to operate more effi ciently. “The quality of service has actually gone up signifi cantly, even as costs have declined,” DuPrey said. And that’s no small trick. �
Our experience with districts of different sizes and challenges allows us to come into situations with a good idea of what needs to be done. Reducing buses must be a priority. This is the quickest way to achieve a full driver force. We also know fair starting wages and benefi ts will attract driver applicants. An enviable workplace retains them.
Often it’s hard for a district to step back from its situation and even recognize the problem, let alone address it. But if we can get districts to focus on the issues, we can usually turn things around pretty quickly.
But we can’t do it alone, and therefore you can never underestimate the impor-tance of partnership. We view principals as partners; they communicate to us the arrival times of the buses in the morning and afternoon so we have an accurate picture of how we’re doing. That part-nership includes a year-end on-time performance survey.
It’s pretty simple, really – If students aren’t at school on time it all goes wrong from there. They might miss important parts of class or even miss breakfast, if that’s part of their program.
Manpower is Key to Performance(continued from page 1)
Francisco DuPrey
“Our experience with districts of different sizes and challenges allows us to come into situations with a good idea of what needs to be done.”
F
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ValuNav Helps Districts Save Signifi cant DollarsKnowing How to Write an RFP is a Valuable Skill
Contemplating outsourcing? Rebidding contracted services?Districts need to watch out for
these costly transportation potholes. • One of your proposers “rounded up”
their pricing because the RFP lacked the details needed to sharpen their pricing pencil.
• Financial pressures force you to select the low price bidder, even though the proposer will clearly not meet the service criteria.
• Learning that the all-in cost of the contracting well exceeds the proposer’s quoted base price per day.
• Unreasonably high expectations scared away the competition, leaving you with only one bidder – the incumbent, who now has no incentive to be competitive.
• Realizing that your RFP has Cadillac-level service specs while your budget demands a Chevy service level.
A recurring problem is school districts that contact TransPar after the RFP and award rather than before, losing any chance for leverage. Knowing what you should be asking for and how to ask for it can yield huge dividends with pricing and service satisfaction.
RFP Pricing Language ImportantAs an example, a pothole can start right
off the bat with the RFP pricing language or matrix. Districts tend to repeat the “price per bus per day” model, when instead they should quantify the daily service effort in hours, miles, buses and runs. Then the proposer knows exactly what their obligation is. Be sure to describe how those bus runs are pack-aged onto buses, such as double routing, triples, shuttles, etc. Then, for example, the district should ask for pricing for “27 double-routed buses, averaging 5.5 hours per day of service, and 9 single-routed buses averaging 4 hours per day.”
Every district is different and should customize its RFP to align with its unique set of services. Contractors should not be allowed to dictate how you prepare your RFP; you should decide, and TransPar can help by devel-oping the process and RFP for you.
ValuNav Exclusive to TransParOnly TransPar offers ValueNav, a
powerful decision-making tool that helps you evaluate prices in conjunc-tion with service promises and other characteristics of an offer. This tool
forces each district to decide in advance of RFPs to prioritize what it is seeking in addition to a reason-able cost including safety, stability, responsiveness and other factors. ValuNav ensures those metrics are embedded in the RFP and receive the appropriate weighting during the evaluation process. In fact, ValuNav ensures cost is not the primary factor in decision-making, and that’s a real breakthrough.
TransPar has helped several districts, large and small, to use ValuNav to develop an outsourcing or rebid plan, quantify a decision matrix, author an RFP, conduct bidder meetings and evaluate vendor proposals. �
