Parents, students and teachers are celebrating the men and women employed by the Calvert County School Bus Contractors Association who take more than 16,000 students safely to Calvert schools each day as part of the fourth annual National Love the Bus program this February.
The Love the Bus program, founded in 2007 and coordinated by the American School Bus Council, is celebrated on Valentine’s Day and throughout February in school districts across the country as a way to raise awareness and appreciation for the hundreds of thousands of school bus drivers who safely transport more than 26 million school children to and from school each day.
“We want to honor the bus drivers who safely take the children in Calvert County to school each day,” said Dwight Bishop, Sr., president of the bus contractors association. “Love the Bus is a great opportunity to thank the people who protect our most precious cargo—our children—and serve as role models on the approximately 150 Calvert school buses that transport children to and from school each day.”
In Calvert County, school buses travel approximately 3.2 million miles each year while transporting students to school and school activities.
To thank their bus drivers, students and staff at Plum Point Elementary School will be serving coffee and donuts to the bus drivers when they drop off students at school on February 12. Students are also writing thank you notes which will be placed in special envelopes decorating a bulleting board in the teacher lunch room.
Several weeks ago, Mutual Elementary thanked their bus drivers by serving morning curbside hot chocolate – Hot Cocoa on the Go Go – to bus drivers. They will also be giving each bus driver a certificate of appreciation for the service they provide students and families.
Bus drivers receive specialized classroom and behind-the-wheel training in driving a school bus, student loading/unloading procedures, student evacuation, managing student behavior and security of students. The bus contractors who manage school buses carefully monitor bus drivers. All school bus drivers are required to participate in pre-employment, random and post-accident drug and alcohol testing, frequent driving record checks, and periodic medical exams to ensure they are physically qualified.
School buses are, by far, the safest vehicles on the road, with a safety record confirmed by government authorities to be better than any other form of transportation. School buses are designed and constructed with more safety features than any other vehicle, and the school transportation industry works continually to incorporate the latest technology, training and testing to keep school buses safe.
“School buses are over 40 times safer than other means of transporting students to school,” said Ed Cassidy, Director of Transportation for Calvert County Public Schools. “We owe a debt of gratitude to all bus drivers and their contractors who work so hard to provide a safe and efficient student transportation program. I hope that students, PTSAs and schools ‘show the love’ to their drivers on February 12.”