BELLEVUE, Wash. — A week and a day before school starts in the Bellevue School District and it’s the bus drivers that are in class outside Interlake High School.
The first-of-its-kind emergency response training specifically for drivers covers a range of topics from applying tourniquets to fighting fires.
“I started driving a bus in 1997,” said Don Dixon the director of transportation for the Bellevue School District. “There was no Instagram, no cell phone, we did have pagers."
Dixon said that emergency response training for bus drivers was unheard of just a few years ago.
This course is a first for his district.
“We wanted to get our drivers prepared as much as possible because it could happen on a school bus God forbid and we want to give the drivers the tools they need to make sure they know what to do,” Dixon said.
The Bellevue School district lost one-third of its bus drivers over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. In an attempt to correct this, it’s offering a cash incentive to new hires — $1,000 for new hires, and more cash for drivers who stay more than a year. The district said it is mostly staffed with a few openings remaining.
The incentives come as districts around the state struggle to find qualified applicants. Seattle Public Schools just announced some bus routes won't be in service for the beginning of the school year — but the district has yet to say which ones.
Back to Bellevue and Rick Gnehm, a 30-year veteran, will be the first to tell you that his job is a tough one.
“We’re the tip of the spear basically. The first person that the person sees in the morning and the last one they see in the afternoon so it’s very important that we get kids to school so that they’re ready to learn,” Gnehm said.
As the world changes and their mission becomes harder, this training is to prepare them for variables they will hopefully never face.