School Bus Crash Crisis Response Plan

In today's world all organizations must have a crisis response plan for any situation. This is no different when it comes to schools. The crisis we are making a disaster response plan for involves a bus crash. The facts of the case at the moment are as follows: as a reward, children from the elementary school were brought on a field trip. On the way back from the field trip the bus crashed. A 6-year old boy, Logan Simpson, was killed. A parent and the bus driver were both airlifted to hospitals. Many children and parents on the bus were injured. Majority of the injuries were scratches and bruises. A blood alcohol level test was given to the bus driver at the hospital, and his B.A.L was .11. It is vital to come up analyze all given information and come up with a crisis response plan. By coming up with specific questions, information, and issues that might come up, the team can be better prepared. The team can then come up with a strategy on how to handle the situation. This will also help to identify the stakeholders in the crisis, and develop specific messages that will become the basis of communication. Once those are all developed, the team can set up a tactical plan for a response in the initial first three days. After that, it is likely that new information will develop and the strategy will have to be changed.

Situation Analysis

Why was the bus driver drinking and driving?

Although the only person that can answer this question is the driver, we can make some assumptions about what drove him to drink and then drive the students. Recently, the driver has been going through a divorce. This has seemed to impact him greatly. He has been showing up for work late, and has been written up for his actions. Perhaps he has been drinking to help ease the pain of the divorce and the down slump of his life.

As a whole, how often does something like this occur?

Drunk driving accidents on school buses seems to be happening more across the USA. However, more research is needed to develop a clear understanding of how often this occurs. Accidents in general involving a school bus are more widely studied. According to McGeehan, Annest, Vajani, Bull, Argon & Smith (2006), “the Transportation Research Board has found that there are 800 fatalities to school aged children annually because of motor vehicle crashes during normal school travel hours…including both passenger and pedestrian related crashes” (p. 1979).

How can something like this be avoided?

There are certain adjustments and precautions that can be taken to avoid another situation like this one. The New York Association for Pupil Transportation has developed some ideas and recommendations to prevent drunk driving cases on school buses. “Some of these include: installation of ignition interlock devices on school buses, ensure that each driver is observed once per day prior to each run, increase the random alcohol testing annual percentage rate for school bus drivers to 100% of the drivers on the roster of each operator, require that positive drug or alcohol test results be reported to DMV and recorded on the driver’s abstract” (“Being heard…,” 2011).

What research is there on the use of seat belts on school buses?

Seat belt research has been a controversy for many years. Although many people think public school buses should have the same requirements as cars, the fact is that seat belts don’t work the same in buses as they do in cars (Johnson, 2010). Advocates of seat belts on school buses focus on benefits of the seat belts. Some of these include: “belts provide improved crash protection in side-impacts and roll-overs, use of seatbelts can reduce the risk of injuries to out-of-position students, and can improve behavior and distraction to the driver” (Hall, 1996). However, those who are against the installation of seat belts have a different view. Hall suggests that opponents of seatbelts interpret the same case studies differently than advocates (2006). He suggests that opponents believe belts are harmful due to jackknifing the head of the student into the seat in front of them; while also finding that students riding in buses with seat belts do not wear the belts while on the bus (Hall, 2006). Even if school buses had safety belts, it is difficult to ensure that children would wear them.

Are school buses safe?

School buses are built for safety. “ The National Safety Council says they’re about 40 times safer that the family car” (Johnson, 2010). Buses, depending on their weight, are separately evaluated for safety. The bus companies have to follow specific requirements to ensure that all buses are as safe as possible. “The current standard requires school buses, < or equal to, 10,000 gross vehicle weight provide lap belts in all seating positions; whereas, school buses > 10,000 pounds provide passive protection to passengers in the form of compartmentalization” (McGeehan et. al., 2006, p. 1979).

Who is to blame?

Although this happened on the schools watch, the driver Richard, is the one to blame.

What will be done for the victims?

There will be a counselor available for anyone who needs it. The principle will also reach out directly to the parents and family of the deceased, and those who were injured. In the case of the deceased, the school will host a candlelight vigil. The school will also keep up to date information posted on the website.

How will the school handle the aftermath of the crisis?

After things have calmed we will focus on rebuilding the reputation of the school, and always stay focused on the victims. It might be smart to set up a meeting with whoever hires the drives from the bus company, and review its driver selection process (Department of Education…, 2002).

How do we assure students that they are safe?

Keep them informed. Hold a seminar during school that focuses on the safety of school buses. Answer any questions they might have. Always make sure they know that counseling is available to them.

Where will additional information for stakeholders be placed?

Additional information will be updated regularly to the school website.

Strategy

In order to develop a complete strategy for this stage of the crisis, it is important that we gain further information. We will first look at previous bus incidences. These incidences may be able to give us a better understanding of how to handle this situation. Also, doing some crisis communication research is pertinent in coming up with a strategy that works for us. After all of the research is conducted it is important to understand that the strategy may change going forward when new information is accessible. Previous accidents, research, and the situation analysis will provide us with all the information needed to produce a working strategy.

There have been many other cases involving bus crashes, and more recently drunk driving incidences. Minneapolis Star Tribune (2003), provides information about a similar situation where the driver had been with the company for several years, and did not have a previous criminal record. The districts crisis management team handled the situation. “Counselors, Social Workers, and others were activated and representatives were sent to offer support to the deceased’s family”( Minneapolis Star Tribune, 2003). Teachers were also given information on how to handle the situation at school. There was another incident involving drunk driving that is useful to the situation.

This incident did not result in any deaths, but the way the school handled the situation is still useful. According to Hamilton (2001), the superintendent made a statement about working with the bus company to ensure the children’s safety. Our strategy is to do the same. We will contact the bus company and schedule a meeting with them to go over their hiring policies. We will make this meeting known to the public. Also, the school limited the blame to the bus driver, and planned a meeting with parents to keep them informed (Hamilton, 2001). We will need to plan a meeting for the parents of all the schools in the district. The previous two incidences provide insight into how other schools handled similar situations. Now, we must look at crisis communication research.

Crisis communication research helps in preparing for, and handling a crisis. Previous research on the topic will help to not make an emotional decision. “Given the responsibility for the safety of hundreds of students, school leaders can easily allow their emotions to override their cognitive, analytical, decision-making processes” (Trump, 2009, p. 13). Communication must be open to all teachers, students, and parents when a crisis occurs. When dealing with an extreme situation like this it is important to understand there are specific issues to attend to.

Our crisis team must look at mental health issues, media issues, and administrative issues within this situation. According to Trump (2013), the school must recognize that people grieve in different ways, and must focus on returning the school back to normalcy. In this case, media was the way the community found out about the accident. Therefore, we must be prepared for ongoing media coverage, and inform the media of school actions and recovery (Trump, 2013). This situation deals with death and injuries to students, and the school must prepare for the possibility of legal actions. The parents will be looking for someone to blame, so our team must consider that.

At this point in the situation, our strategy will be to place the blame on the driver and offer the help of our counselors. However, we need to realize that not all of the parents will be happy with just the driver being blamed for the accident. There was a death that we must take very seriously. This also happened during a school trip, so there is a possibility for a negative outcome for us. First, because we did not talk to the media immediately we will have to give a public statement. Dan will be the spokesperson for this statement. Dan should be sure to include sympathy to the victims and families.

Speaking directly to the family of the deceased is extremely important. An example would be, “our hearts go out to the Simpson family in this time of tragedy. As well as, the students and parents that were injured today.” However, Dan must also incorporate that we are doing everything in our power to get to the bottom of this accident. Here, is where we will “shift the blame: blame someone or thing other than the organization” (Coombs, 2007, p. 32). A brief statement will be made about how the driver had recently been going through hard times, and is no excuse for what happened today. “We will be setting up a meeting with the bus company to go over their hiring processes, and possible prevention ideas.”

The public statement, will tell the media that we are looking into ways to prevent this from ever happening again. Lastly, our strategy is for Dan to talk about the counseling being offered to anyone needing it. State that the teachers will be prepped on how to handle anyone having a hard time with this when school resumes on Wednesday. This is also the time Dan will mention that the school will be setting up a candlelight vigil that will take place tomorrow night at the school. End with, “any and all additional information will be constantly updated on the school website.”

After the media statement is given, it is time to start implementing our strategy. We want the focus to be on the well being of the students and families. We want to be sure the families understand we know how sensitive this situation is. “The younger a child is, the more environmental support and structure he or she requires to weather a crisis without lasting emotional scars” (Pitcher & Poland, 1992, p. 11). We are dealing with a 6-year olds death, and this will impact many people. The situation may change over the next few days as new information is learned, and we will change our strategy as need be.

Stakeholders

The stakeholders of this situation are specifically the parents, students, family, school faculty, and those who are within the school district. Although the general public and surrounding areas will care about what happens, they are not as affected by our actions as the immediate stakeholders. The most important, and most heavily targeted stakeholders will be the students, parents and their families. We want to direct our messages, as closely as possible, to them. We need to recognize their importance to the school, and to the situation at hand. School faculty will be targeted after them. We need the teachers and workers of the school to know that we understand their situation in this accident. We want them to feel comfortable remaining to work for this district. Lastly in importance, will be the general public. We will not specifically target our messages to them. However, we will be aware that the general public is following the news coverage as well as, our most targeted stakeholders.

Stakeholders will be looking at us for information. “Stakeholders do not know what is happening; therefore, they require information about how the crisis affects them and what they should do to protect themselves” (Coombs, 2012, p. 8). We will need to show the stakeholders that we are looking into ways to prevent this from happening again.

Stakeholders want to know what is being done to protect them from similar crisis in the future” (Coombs, 2007, p. 165). Now that the stakeholders are identified, we can start to develop messages to form our communication.

Messages

We have identified the stakeholders, and need to develop three key messages. We must look at what we believe the stakeholders should know about the crisis, and we should keep it simple (Bernstein, 2013). The first message will be that we are looking into ways to prevent this from happening again. This message is most important. Parents and families will not feel safe putting their children back on the buses if we don’t communicate to them that we are looking into what we can change. According to An and Cheng (2012), prior reputation will be the influence of crisis communication (chapter 2). Meaning that because we had a good reputation going into this, our communication will be better receive, as long as we show we are sticking to what we say. There are still two more messages that need to be developed.

The next message will be focused on the counselors. We want the stakeholders to know that we are doing everything we can to get through this rough time. We have made it clear to media, and within our public meeting statement that counseling will be available to anyone that needs it. Not just the victims of the accident. We will also make it clear that the teachers have been told how to handle a situation in the classroom. The last message will focus on what we are doing to help the children.

The final message will be in regards to what we plan to do in order to help the students that will struggle with this. We want the stakeholders to know that the kids are the most important things to us and we take their well being very seriously. We want to, “guide students in helpful ways to remember the deceased” (Department of Education…, 2002). Providing emotional support and coordinating the candlelight vigil will show the stakeholders that we care. We want them to think of us as being on their side, and going through the same things they are. Now that we have developed our three key messages, we can move onto figuring out the tactical plan.

Tactical Plan and Initial Response

Using all of the information we have up until this point we can come up with a tactical plan. We will develop this plan and execute the set up strategy over the next three days. First, we need to develop goals of our response. Our goals are to take the blame off of the school, and build back our reputation for caring about the children. In order to do this, we will have to show the stakeholders that we are taking the necessary steps to ensure this never happens again. The main goal is to get the stakeholders to ensure their trust in us again, and feel safe sending their children to school on the school bus. Now that we have established the goals, we need to come up with a recommended tactic.

We recommend that the principles of both the middle school, and elementary school visit the Simpson family. The child who died was in the elementary school, and the sister was in the middle school. Having both principles there will show that we understand there is more than one person affected by this accident. While Dan is giving the public statement we will have Patty Atwater and Karen Donovan go to the Simpsons house. Considering that the others were mainly injured with only scrapes and bruises we will have Dan Scipparella contact the others families that were in the school bus by phone. He will do this after he has given the public statement.

Dan will state that we are giving the teachers skills to help those who are struggling in class. In order to do this we will need to call all teachers in for a meeting. We also recommend that we do an open meeting on Wednesday night that parents are able to attend. We will do this the following day, before we resume for school again on Wednesday. Lastly, Dan stated that we would be holding a candlelight vigil as a way to help students remember the deceased. This will be held at the school the following night at 6PM. Information for the vigil will be posted on the school website. Anyone is invited to attend. After we figure out the recommended tactic, we must come up with the tactical sequence.

The tactical sequence will be put in place so we know what should be done first, and when things should be done. The very first thing that needs to be done is the public statement. Dan will be the spokesperson for this crisis, and our developed strategy includes his public statement. It will be brief and stated so, “we would like to again give our condolences to the families involved, and are currently working on the next steps in prevention.” While the public statement is being given to the media, Karen and Patty will be on their way to the Simpsons house. Following the public statement, Dan will call all of those involved in the bus accident. The next step in the sequence will involve setting up meetings.

In order to follow through with the statements made by Dan, there must be meetings set-up. Tuesday the school will be closed; which will allow us to have a teachers meeting for all teachers in the district. At this meeting we will have counselors available to answer questions teachers may have. Also, they will be given resources to use if they notice students having trouble in class. This will also be the day we hold the candlelight vigil. The vigil will be at 6PM at the elementary school. The information will be posted on the schools website by end of day on Monday. The school psychologist will be the one hosting the vigil, along with Dan. The following day we will have students back in class.

Wednesday will be a very important day in the sequence. We will need to call the bus company and set up a meeting with them as promised. This meeting needs to be noted on the school website so stakeholders know we are keeping our word. Lastly, we need to hold an open meeting for all parents within the district. This can be held at the High School auditorium. Everyone will be at the meeting including: Dan Scipparella, Joe Mahoney, Karen Donovan, Scott Preston, Mike Carroll, and Dave Morrison. We will hold the meeting at 8PM so families can still spend time with their children for dinner, and see how their child’s first day back at school went. We will post this information on the school website. Within all of these meetings and whatnot, I will be conducting more research on how we can prevent this from happening again. We will all convene together at 7PM before the parent meeting. At that time we will evaluate how our strategy has gone, and if we need to make any changes going forward.

After Wednesday things will begin to change. We will have to make adjustments as we see fit. As long as we use the information we have developed throughout the plan we will get through this crisis. After everything calms down we can begin to look at how to recover from this tragedy.

References

An, S., & Cheng, I. (2012). Crisis communication research in public relations journals: Tracking research trends over thirty years. In Handbook of crisis communication

Being heard: About ignition interlock devices. (2011). NYAPT. Retrieved from  http://www.nyapt.org/uncategorized/being-heard-hearing-on-ignition-interlock-devices

Bernstein, J. (2013). The 10 steps of crisis communications. Bernstein Crisis Management. Retrieved from http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/articles/10-steps-of-crisis-communications.html

Coombs, W. T. (n.d.). Parameters for crisis communication. In Handbook of crisis communication

Coombs, W. T. (2007). Protecting organization reputations during a crisis: The development and application of situational crisis communication theory . Corporate Reputation Review, 10(3), Retrieved from http://www.palgrave-journals.com/crr/journal/v10/n3/pdf/1550049a.pdf

Coombs, W. T. (2012). Ongoing crisis communication (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Department of Education, Division of Special Education and Student Services. (2002). Model school crisis management plan. Virginia Department of Education. Retrieved fromhttp://www.doe.virginia.gov/support/safety_crisis_management/emergency_crisis_management/model_plan.pdf

Hall, W. L. (1996). Seat belts on school buses: A review of issues and research page 1 w.l. hall, unc hsrc february 29, 1996 s eat b elts on s chool b uses . (University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center)Retrieved from http://www.hsrc.unc.edu/pdf/schoolbus/Busbelt.pdf

Hamilton, J. (2001, September 01). Bus driver faces dui charge on first day. Hartford Courant. Retrieved from articles.courant.com/2004-09-01/news/0409010604_1_student-transportation-bus-school-board

Johnson, M. A. (2010, December 29). Why your child's school bus has no seat belts. Today. Retrieved from http://www.today.com/id/40820669/ns/us_news-life/

McGeehan, J. ,. M., Annest, J. L. ,. P., Vajani, M. ,. M., Bull, M. J. ,. M., Argon, P. E. ,. M. M., & Smith, G. A. M. D. (2006). School bus–related injuries among children and teenagers in the united states, 2001-2003. American Academy of Pediatrics, Retrieved from http://www.pediatricsdigest.mobi/content/118/5/1978.short

Minneapolis Star Tribune. (2003). Bus accident kills Maplewood girl. Minneapolis Star Tribune. Retrieved from http://www.schwebel.com/press/bus-accident-kills-maplewood-girl/

Pitcher, G. D., & Poland, S. (1992). Crisis intervention in the schools. New York, NY: Guilford Press. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=DxmYzCkXuFMC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=crisis management with school bus accidents&ots=Te0fdrlu1A&sig=PjYxRSBBADT9l1OWGh84tQ9vFOY

Trump, K. S. (2009). School emergency planning: Back to the basics. Student Assistance Journal, Retrieved from http://www.schoolsecurity.org/resources/School Emergency Planning Back to the Basics SAJ Spring 2009.pdf

Trump, K. (2013). School crisis/ emergency recovery. Retrieved from National School Safety and Security Services website: www.schoolsecurity.org/resources/crisis_recovery.html