Don Lenzen

One school's plan for safe delivery of students

Best Practices in School Resource Leadership (September 2006)

Don Lenzen, principal
Eagle View Elementary, Pequot Lakes

Four years ago as we began to plan Eagle View Elementary School’s layout and access from the road, we set safety as a top priority. To accomplish this, we separated the bus and auto entrances, and created pickup and drop off procedures that maintained two points of contact for students and their rides. My biggest concern was for the parent pick up area at the end of the day.

Since we have a high concern for students getting with the appropriate person at day’s end, we developed a procedure that seems to work both efficiently and appropriately for parents and students. The procedure starts with a no bus change policy. Students are expected to ride the same bus every night to an appointed drop off location. Before this policy, we were writing up to 35 or 40 bus passes on a regular basis. The new policy shifted some of the change requests to the parent pick up point.

Our parent pick up circle requires drivers to remain in line until they get to the circle for pick up. We can accommodate about eight cars in the circle. One of our paraprofessionals meets the drivers as they come to the circle. She asks who they will be picking up and relays this information via a radio to the front entrance of the school -- where riders are lined up and waiting with another paraprofessional. This person takes each name and sends the student to the vehicle when it has come to a complete stop in the circle area. Drivers are not able to leave their vehicles except to help younger students open doors and get buckled in appropriately.