First Student school bus (photo by Liam Verster)

By Liam Verster

Back to School Plans

Safety protocols implemented for school bus services

Aug 17, 2020 | 2:07 PM

Students who take the bus to school will have to follow new guidelines set out by the province. Buses will have assigned seating, and masks will be mandatory at all times.

Karl Germann, the Superintendent for the Grande Prairie and District Catholic Schools, says they will also require students to have bus passes, which will be scanned on entry and exit of the buses. He says these are going to be the rules that people need to follow in order to use the bus, in an effort to ensure the health and safety of the students and school staff.

Location Manager for First Student, Timothy Nesbitt, says kids can be forgetful, and in some instances may not remember to bring their masks from home, and the busses will be stocked with disposable masks.

“Not every kid is going to remember their mask every day, so we can give them those. However, if [a student] is unwilling to wear a mask, then that’s a different story. We have very strict direction this year that a pass and a mask are required to ride, and if you don’t have those things then you won’t be riding the bus.”

Nesbitt does add that after a few months when the drivers have gotten to know all the kids, then an exemption may be made for a student who forgets their pass. However, children that are unknown and don’t have a pass won’t be allowed on board.

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He adds that the process of turning students away is still being developed, but will be dependent on the circumstances.

“It will depend very heavily on if their parent is with them and how old they are. We can’t treat a Grade 6 kid who’s not wearing a mask the same way that we would treat a Grade 1 student.”

In some instances the driver may pull over and call the child’s parent to see if they can give them a ride, or contact the school to ensure they are indeed a student, and proceed to make decisions from there.

Germann says if there are students that continuously forget their passes and masks, or are breaking the rules once on board, then action will be taken.

“Generally if it’s somebody who’s forgetting, then it’s a conversation that occurs generally with the bus driver first and then the principal, and then they’re just removed from the bus if it’s somebody totally disobeying the rules, but sometimes it’s just a little bit about learning. You get a pretty good idea within the first few seconds if the kid is just forgetting, or if the kid is being difficult.”

The technology used in the bus passes will also allow for tracking that is similar to public transit models. When a pass is scanned as a student gets on or off a bus, it comes up on the First View app. Nesbitt says this can be used to ease parents concerns, as well as do contact tracing.

“So you know where the bus is at any given time, you know when it’s coming to your stop, you know when your kid got on that bus and when they got off. And then, more specifically, you even know what seat that kid is on that bus. And so if there ever were any type of outbreak, or if somebody were to get sick that rides one of our vehicles, we would be able to know exactly who they’re sitting beside, and who was on the vehicle with them.”

School Boards are in charge of the bus passes, who print them and deliver them to the school, and Nesbitt says the public schools are also doing the same thing as the GPCSD. Families are encouraged to register as soon as possible for their spots, as every seat will be assigned, and drivers won’t allow any unregistered students on board.

The buses will be disinfected after every trip.