Thank you all for visiting our booth at the 2014 FAPT & SESPTC Trade Show in Daytona Beach, FL. I enjoyed seeing everyone again this year. I noticed a lot of training trends, but the four most popular topics I discussed with booth visitors were:

1. Florida School Bus Driver Classroom Training – Online – Our online Florida School Bus Driver course is recognized by Florida Department of Education (DOE) as meeting the requirements for the twenty hours of classroom instruction. This is an affordable, convenient, web-based option for training. STS online training is currently be used in Walton, Holmes, Wakulla, Clay, Marion, Volusia, Manatee, Hendry, Monroe, Okeechobee, Charlotte, Pinellas, Hamilton, and DeSoto counties.

2. School Bus Driver: Preparation and Refresher – Online – This school bus driver preparation and refresher training curriculum covers common classroom content necessary for school bus drivers to successfully pass a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) written test. This curriculum is commonly used by districts, schools, and/or organizations to satisfy new driver, remediation, or in-service training requirements.

3. Custom Training Catalogs – Online – We can put together a custom catalog built to your specifications so your employees get the right training. Courses can be pulled from our full transportation catalog or general topic courses like Sexual Harassment Awareness, Bloodborne Pathogens, Time Management, or Stress Management.

 4. National Association for Pupil Transportation (NAPT) Professional Development Series – Online – NAPT, in partnership with School Training Solutions (STS), offers NAPT Professional Development Series courses online. You can begin working on Certified Pupil Transportation Specialist (CPTS), Certified Supervisor (CSPT), and Certified Director (CDPT) certificates or work toward your recertification.

Our full catalog is available on the website, and I’ve also linked directly to it in this email. I would be happy to send any additional information. For those who have already requested information, it is on the way.

Thanks again for visiting the booth! Have a great day!

Thank you all for visiting our booth and attending the presentation about online training at the 2014 OAPT Tradeshow in Norman, OK. I enjoyed seeing everyone again this year. I noticed a lot of training trends, but the three most popular topics I heard from booth visitors were:

1. School Bus Driver Certification Training – Our online Oklahoma School Bus driver training is recognized by DOE as covering the classroom requirement for school bus drivers. This is an affordable, convenient, web-based option for training. This training is available for purchase through OAPT!

2. OK School Bus Driver Inservice Training – Our online Oklahoma School Bus driver curriculum can also be used for inservice training. A list of the accepted inservice training topics is available on the OKDOE Transportation webpage. Look for the Annual Inservice Verification Form and SDE Approved Subjects document. This web-based training is also available for purchase through OAPT!

3. OK School Bus Driver Re-Certification – After a period of inactivity, a school bus driver may be required to recertify by taking training on specific topics. OAPT offers an online version of this Re-certification training!

If you would like to find out more about the exciting online training options for Oklahoma school bus drivers, please contact us or OAPT directly. Thanks again for attending the Conference and Tradeshow!

Have a great day!

Each year School Training Solutions (STS) releases a school-year version of our online training courses. Many customers use these online training courses to satisfy yearly mandated requirements for their school employees.

Learn how we can help your school, organization, or department meet training needs and save money.

Our most popular courses include:

• Bloodborne Pathogens
• Conflict Resolution for Adults
• Identifying and Reporting Child Abuse
• Sexual Harassment Awareness
• Stress Management
• Time Management
• School Bus Driver Classroom/In-service Curriculum

Happy E-Learning!

“Driving Safety” is one of the many useful courses offered by School Training Solutions. “Driving Safety” includes 14 hours of training that provides useful information about the negative effects of alcohol and other drugs, the importance of following the rules of the road, vehicle maintenance and, my focus today, defensive driving.

It’s easy to visualize “defensive driving” as applying primarily to high-speed highway driving or those bumper-to-bumper rush-hour commutes where people are losing their patience and jockeying for position. Being alert and fully aware of one’s surroundings is certainly important in these situations, but let me tell you about another setting that many drivers would not think of as testing one’s defensive driving skills. I’m talking about your average college campus. Working at Pensacola State College these past 11 years has opened my eyes to just how careful on-campus drivers must be to anticipate potential accidents—both car vs. car and car vs. pedestrian.

Here’s why:

Many drivers (mostly students) have a tendency to completely ignore the 15-mile-per hour campus speed limit and go 30-plus through parking lots and along congested access roads.

Too many students have a persistent tendency to walk right in front of vehicles with an “I know you’ll stop” attitude that seems to preclude their even acknowledging the existence of approaching vehicles.

Drivers—again, mostly students—are frequently in such a hurry that they will force the right-of-way in the aforementioned parking lots and at any and all road intersections. The prevailing attitude here seems to be “I’m going to pull right in front of you and I know you’ll stop because you prefer letting me have my way, even though I have the yield or stop sign, rather than getting into a wreck.”

Given the above, which I observe on a daily basis at Pensacola State and which I have no doubt is duplicated on many other campuses, I have become even more aware of the importance of defensive driving than I was before. The most advisable orientation is a consistent assumption that the other person is not going to either follow the rules or behave in a safe and courteous manner.

Of course, there are many drivers and pedestrians on college campuses who do put safety first, but it only takes one of the other variety to ruin your day if you’re not paying strict attention.

Recently, a student was hit in the parking lot right in the front of the building where my office is located. It was an unfortunate “perfect storm” where a student driving way too fast in a parking lot plowed into a student with the “I’m walking right in front of your car without even looking at you because I know you’ll stop” syndrome. The result was a pedestrian lying on the pavement after being bounced off the hood of a car and hitting a windshield hard enough to almost shatter it. The student was not seriously hurt, but he sure could have been.

So, wherever you are, and it may well be somewhere you wouldn’t think would challenge your defensive driving skills, it helps to know the basics. Check out the STS “Driving Safety” course. It’s just the ticket for keeping you safe and secure on the road and elsewhere!

Andrew Metzger
Guest blogger
School Training Solutions