The Back-to-School Checklist, 12 Things to Fix Before Next August

In September every director knows exactly what broke and why. By June some of that knowledge is forgotten, and the following year the back to school crunch turns into a mad dash yet again. So we wrote it down.

Across two live sessions of In The Rearview, our panel series for student transportation leaders, six directors from six states compared notes on what actually worked in their districts this fall. Marc Medina of Farmingdale SD in New York, Mike Satterfield of Forsyth County Schools in Georgia, Sarah Birdsong of Chapel Hill ISD in Texas, Peggie L. Overton of Agua Fria Union HSD in Arizona, Dawnett Wright of Peninsula SD in Washington and Ben Bennett of Emmett SD in Idaho. What follows is the distilled version, 12 practices organized by when the work happens.

Spring, before the rollover

Start the timeline in spring with dated deadlines for SIS rollover, routing, parent notices and staff week. Make transportation opt-in so only riders go into routing. Route rising 6th and 9th graders before the July rollover. Meet with special education early, before day one rather than during week one.

Summer

Set hard cutoff dates for families and hold them. Communicate early and on every channel, starting in spring and repeating right up to the first day. Align with enrollment and the SIS so student data reaches transportation accurate, complete and daily. Build a driver readiness plan with route sheets, dry runs and device training.

Staff week and day one

Protect office focus time by sending parent calls to voicemail for the two weeks before school and answering them in order. Plan late changes safely, publish turnaround expectations and give wrong turns a couple of days before you re-route.

All year

Treat driver retention as pay, speed and culture. And stop unneeded work, look for buses that overlap on the same roads and measure the rest. One district cut route mileage about 20 percent in 24 months and freed drivers to cover as subs.

The full version of every practice, with the reasoning behind it, lives in the printable Back-to-School Checklist. Both session replays are there too.

Get the checklist and watch the replays at busright.com/backtoschool.

And if you want to see what the practices look like with the right platform underneath them, request a demo.