Student transportation is another issue which is different in the world of small private schools than it is in the world of public education. We still have to take the same care to keep our students safe, but, since our population is much smaller, the issues we face are on a much smaller scale. After discussing the issues related to transportation with our Operations Manager and Head of School, I identified two significant issues that relate to student transportation: liability and parking.
Liability
Anytime we move students around, we take care to protect both them and the institution. Being sure that the vehicles, drivers and conditions are safe are issues of safety; making sure that appropriate insurance, licenses and permission is taken care of is related to protecting the institution from liability. This impacts our policies in a number of ways:
- Only specially licensed drivers, listed specifically on school insurance policies, may drive students. My Head of School once told me, “I can’t think of a single good reason to put a student into my personal automobile,” and this perspective had an impact on my thinking. It only takes one incident to destroy an institution, so care must be taken.
- Permission forms must be obtained covering every trip and activity.
- Insurance and maintenance on all school vehicles is always up-to-date.
Parking
A second major challenge is parking. Many of our upper school students drive themselves to school, which raises a number of issues. First, there is the simple challenge of offering them all a safe, legal place to park their cars. Once that is managed -which in our case involves a lottery to assign a limited number of parking permits- we still have to supervise the lot, make sure students drive and park safely and manage the hundreds of vehicles which come onto campus every day for drop-off and pick-up.
The school’s security force is helpful in this regard. Stickers are distributed to allow vehicles onto campus, guards man every entrance and vehicles are only allowed on-campus at certain times..