Bus Drivers Hold the Key to Identifying and Assisting Homeless Students

bus drivers key to helping homeless students

These Often-overlooked Education Professionals Have a Unique Advantage

Bus drivers are integral to America’s school systems, even though they’re often overlooked as school employees. But their role in transporting students to and from the school daily gives them a unique perspective that no other teacher, administrator, or guidance counselor has.

Bus drivers are the only people in the school system who regularly see students’ homes. This allows them to stay attuned to each child’s living situation and any changes that might occur. By maintaining a good rapport with the students and integrating bus drivers more closely with the larger school system, this unique position can be harnessed to identify and assist homeless students within the district.

It’s Already Working For Schools Who Leverage Their Drivers

In one school district in Vermont, bus drivers function as caring eyes and ears that help to identify students in need of support across the sprawling rural school district.

The bus driver knows when a student moves in with grandma after a house fire or starts to get on and off the bus at different stops each day. They can pass this information on to the school’s homeless liaison, who can help connect these families with appropriate resources.

If the district didn’t support these drivers in harnessing the power of their unique position, many of these kids would slip through the cracks without access to programs and qualifying resources.

Beyond assistance programs, a school district can do a lot of good for homeless students in partnership with its transportation professionals. For example, specialty transportation can be offered to students experiencing homelessness that’s flexible enough to accommodate their changing housing situation.

Of course, there are further techniques districts could embrace to harness the power of their bus drivers.

Change Can Start With One

It might be hard to imagine how bus drivers, often disconnected from the goings on of the school at large, can move into such an integral position overnight. And in this case, maybe a full-speed-ahead, large-scale integration attempt isn’t the best way to go. But one person paying attention and speaking up can make a big difference.

One bus driver building a rapport with the students they transport and staying attuned to their housing situations may be able to identify several kids who are currently falling through the cracks. Passing that knowledge on to admin, guidance counselors, or a homeless liaison can demonstrate how the position can be better leveraged to help the kids who need it. 

If other school employees receive training on spotting signs of student homelessness, check to see if bus drivers are included in that training. If not, suggest that they be included and emphasize how their everyday interaction with student housing arrangements can help identify homeless students.

This is an easy suggestion to make whether you’re a bus driver yourself, a teacher, a school admin, a parent, or simply a concerned community member who sees an easy opportunity for improvement. You could even mention that federal law requires all school staff who serve homeless youth to be trained on possible signs of homelessness.

Since bus drivers undoubtedly serve homeless students (whether they’ve yet been identified as such), they should definitely be included in that training!

Knowing What To Look For Opens Your Eyes

In districts where bus drivers have been given training on signs of homelessness to watch out for, it’s fairly common for past experiences that never registered as more than odd to suddenly gain context.

Several drivers reported experiences they didn’t recognize as a potential sign of homelessness then, but in hindsight, it seems like a glaring neon sign. That’s what makes this training so valuable.

Showing transportation professionals the specific signs they should be looking for to identify homeless students makes them more effective at spotting homelessness when they see it. For many people, homelessness is not something that’s on their day-to-day radar before training. If it is, they may imagine something that looks much different than the daily reality of many homeless youths. 

One driver in a rural Michigan school district mentioned that he had once seen a couple of kids leaving for school directly from a barn in the morning. Before the training, it struck him as a little odd, but he never considered homelessness. After the training, he recognized that those kids likely don’t have a safe place to live and referred them to the school’s homelessness liaison to get them connected with help.

There are a lot of red flags that can point to homelessness, which may simply be overlooked by drivers who don’t know what to look for. Educating bus drivers on these subtle signs and empowering them to connect homeless students with the resources available through the school system can make a world of difference in countless children’s lives. 

Bus drivers are perhaps the most equipped to identify homeless students of all the education professionals that make up a school district. It’s time that we take advantage of that.


Kayla Robbins

Kayla Robbins

  

Kayla Robbins is a freelance writer who works with big-hearted brands and businesses. When she's not working, she enjoys knitting socks, rolling d20s, and binging episodes of The Great British Bake Off.

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