The dedicated men and women who make up the world’s leading and largest global non-profit pre-K through 20 school safety center have launched a campaign to provide the largest source of free and low-cost school safety information, tools and resources.

As part of that initiative, we provide blogs for three national periodicals, our own web site and now, for School Transportation News (STN).

As you can see by perusing its web site, STN offers pupil transportation safety information and resources as a service to our nation’s school bus drivers and those who lead them. We feel honored to be able to partner with STN to help them provide even more helpful information.

In this blog, we will attempt to provide up-to-date, practical and easy to apply information to help create and maintain safe, effective school bus routes where dignity, honor and respect are prevalent. Please feel free to contact us for additional information on school safety or to sign up for our free e-newsletter at the Safe Havens International website.

We thank you for your interest in and most of all for your commitment to safer schools.

Mike Dorn is the executive director of Safe Havens International, a global, non-profit school safety center for kindergarten through 12th grade. He is a former school district police chief for Bibb County, Ga., a former school safety specialist for the Georgia Emergency Mangement Agency and a former anti-terrorism planner and lead program manager at the Georgia Office of Homeland Security.

This week, the Indiana Department of Education said a study of 184 districts state-wide unovered more than 3,500 cases of motorists illegally passing the buses with stop arms activated and amber lights flashing. 6News in Indianapolis reported that the count was tied to the NASPDTS request.

The Indiana DOE estimates that nearly 630,000 motorists will illegally pass stopped school bus stop arms in a typical school year, and 10,600 of them are on the right side of the bus, where children are loading and unloading. Georgia, Virginia and Washington state all passed laws this year to allow school districts to equip video cameras on school bus stop arms or on the external body of the vehicle to catch these motorists. Washington state's law even went as far to require the one-day count each year, starting next May.

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With school districts continuing to face an up-hill-battle as far as new bus purchases are concerned, a school district in Connecticut is turning to a familiar friend of late, state grant funds. New Canaan Public Schools will participate in the Connecticut Clean Fuel Program to help purchase a new hybrid diesel/electrict school bus. The bus retails at $145,000, which shows that, slowly but surely, the incremental cost of these alt-fuel vehicles is moving south. The grant will nearly get New Canaan half of the way there with an award of $63,000.

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Of course, challenges in purchasing new buses and simply maintaining the current fleet are worsening under growing school district budget cuts. Last week, we reported that Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn recommended nearly $90 million in cuts to the state's transportation reimbursement program for school districts. A local superintendent said this week that the cuts will result in less routes and longer bus routes that escape the chopping block. And, in the end, the rural districts will be hit the hardest.

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Finally this week, dozens of school bus drivers nationwide are preparing to head to Baltimore July 15 and 16 to compete in the International School Bus Driver Safety Competition hosted by NSTA. Ruth Foster and Tina Richardson of Rockaway Township Schools will represent New Jersey. Foster won the 40th annual New Jersey Transportation Professional's Safety Training and Applied Roadeo Skills Competitio (whew, now that's a mouthful), and Gina Palmieri also of Rockaway Township finished in fourth place.

Last year, Larry Hannon of Centennial School District in Warminster, Pa., won the conventional class and overall championship. It was Hannon's third win in a row and sixth overall dating back to 1980. Hannon would not win again until 2001, and then he took home first prize in 2005, 2006, 2009 and 2010.

NewsOK.com reported that school bus drivers were being trained by the federal program under the auspices of the Transportation Security Administration to report suspicious criminal or potential terrorist activities that they observe on the roads, especially in remembrance of the 16th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. School bus drivers were also trained on the First Observer at the recently-concluded California Association of School Transportation Officials show in San Diego.

Last year, 36,000 school bus drivers nationwide were trained in counter-terrorism reporting.

Not only can drivers be the eyes and ears for law enforcement personnel but they could play a key role in protecting against an attack on a school bus. While a very rare occurrence in the United States, most attacks on a school bus are performed by "pranksters" or take the form student fights. And sometimes, the students can get very violent with each other, as was the case when a girl was recently stabbed on the bus.

But increasingly since 9/11 the student transportation industry has increased its vigilance for becoming more security conscious. There is a fear we could see an incident that those in the Middle East have become all too familiar with. There have been many terrorism attacks on buses transporting school children often because the vehicles also are transporting soldiers. For instance, in Israel armed soldiers are known to ride on school buses in an effort to protect the children.

That security practice can literally backfire. A 16-year-old boy in Jerusalem who was injured when anti-tank missile from the Gaza Strip struck his school bus earlier this month eventually died.

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Unfortunately, back home, a school bus driver in Parkland, Pa., died after his bus hit another car, swerved off the road and ran into a building. No children were on board at the time.

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More pleasant news come from the Tippecanoe School Corporation in Indiana, which swept the state's America's Best School Bus Techncian qualifier. Alan Fidler placed first, and fellow Tippecanoe technicians Chuck Schneidt and Kirk Brooks were second and third, respectively. Schneidt won last year's competition, then placed second in the national competition.

This year's NAPT America's Best School Bus Inspector and School Bus Training and Technician Skills Competition is scheduled for late September in San Antonio, Texas.

The call for presentations asks the following questions: "What lessons have you learned?" and "How can your experiences enlighten others and advance the work of this important cause?" This industry could also ask the question, "How can Safe Routes to School and transportation become better partners?" That's apropos as the conference is titled "Building Connections: Schools + Streets + Communities."

The folks at SRTS say it doesn't matter if a program is well established or just getting started, whether you are a youth or an adult. It's all about having something valuable to share. And I think it's fair to say the pupil transportation community has plenty to share as child safety advocates, especially when there has been a effort started by NASDPTS two years ago to make student walks to and from bus stops eligible for 10 percent of the infrastructure funds available to the federal SRTS program.

The STN EXPO held in Reno, Nev., July 23 through 27, hopes to answer similar questions, especially on recommendations and best practices when collaborating with SRTS representatives in the superintendent's office, the transportation department or in public safety.

The SRTS conference is scheduled for Aug. 16 through 18 at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Wouldn't it be great for pupil transporters to have a voice at event?

Racing each other to pick up more passengers, the old school buses in Panama City collide with alarming frequency. One particularly horrific crash, which injured nearly three dozen people, occurred on the Cinta Costera in January, 2010. Here is a translation of excerpts of an article about the event:

Transit: Race Leaves More than 30 Injured Panic on the Coastal Beltway

Oh my God! The shout was followed with alarmed screams of the more than 60 passengers aboard a Panama Viejo bus, which rolled over several times as crushed sheet metal crunched over the hard pavement. Out of the completely overturned vehicle climbed men, women, and children, some bleeding, others in pain, and the rest in hysterics. Thirty-five injured was the final count, among them 10 [were] seriously injured and two infants.

It was about 10:40 a.m. yesterday, Sunday, when the vehicular tragedy occurred. The Panama Viejo bus, license plate B-3388, expired since 2003, was racing with another Panama Viejo bus, which fled the scene. During the race the young driver lost control and ended up crashing into a lamp pole. The bus destroyed the signs, literally flew and spun in the air, fell 20 meters away from the impact, and ended up facing in the opposite direction. People escaped from the emergency door and the front on their own, but several passengers were trapped inside the vehicle. A young man’s right arm was trapped between the pavement and the heavy bus; more than fifteen soldiers were able to move the diablo rojo to free him.

Tears, pain and blood – the scene was sad. The injured, trembling in panic, sat among the steps that are used daily by dozens of children for fun, waiting this time for the help of paramedics. Most victims were women.

The driver of the vehicle, Elías Eliecer Guerra Singh, 20, was unhurt in the accident. He is not licensed to drive public transport, only private cars. In addition, his age is not adequate to drive that kind of public transport.

The second bus involved was located hidden in Panama Viejo, where it was impounded.

With such graphic and sensational media reports about diablo rojo crashes, it’s no wonder the government is making the implementation of Metrobus such a priority. At a November event with the first of the newly delivered buses, the presidential minister made the ambitious claim that there would be zero diablos rojos in the city by August, 2011. When questioned about the seating capacity of the new Volvo buses, he replied “The important thing is not to go seated, the problem is to go safely, in a comfortable and trustworthy manner.” Crashes like the ones above only heighten the government’s ability to replace the existing system and eliminate the existing drivers. Metrobus drivers will not be competing for fares, so there should be little incentive for them to drive at such high speeds.

Maybe Panama City’s congestion is another cause of speeding; perhaps drivers release their road rage, pent up from hours of sitting in traffic jams, by driving at excessive speeds if any space opens up. If the traffic is so bad that no space for a cathartic momentum binge opens up, then defeated bus drivers sometimes give up, tell everyone to get off, turn around, and go home (as my bus driver did one night when I was coming back from Santa Librada).

Luckily, my experiences riding (and driving) Panama Viejo buses were much safer. Luís, a friend who works as a conductor on a Panama Viejo bus, knew Elías Eliecer Guerra Singh (along with many of the other Panama Viejo drivers) and even showed me some cell-phone pictures of his bus before the crash.

I was, however, involved in one minor collision. One afternoon, riding a Vía España bus from Via Veneto to Plaza Cinco de Mayo, we were caught behind another bus that was loading. After some ineffectual honking, our frustrated driver finally pulled out into the other lane and started to speed down the street. The bus that had been loading, not wanting to fall behind and lose out on passengers further down the street, lurched off and the race (regata in Spanish) was on. As the drivers raced, someone on our bus yelled “parada (stop),” and our driver had to pull over to let her off. He misjudged the speed of the bus to his right, cut it off, and, with a loud bang, clipped its front bumper with his rear one. It was clear that settling the incident would take a while, so we all filed off the bus, not paying any fare to the sheepish driver and heading up the street to find another bus.

STN's Stewart is a graduate of Swarthmore College and a recipient of a 2010 Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, a grant to study abroad. Stewart's project is "School Bus Migrations: Recycling Transit in the Global South." Follow his blog and see more photos from his journey.