Preparations for back to school are underway.
Bus Buddies hosted its young rider program to prepare children for riding the school bus. Bus Buddies says children under 8-years-old were invited to Ecole Catholique St. Dominique to learn about bus safety and take a ride on a bus. President Ryan Hartling says parents with young children got an invitation to the day with their school registration. Hartling says the kids got to watch a few safety videos and take a ride on a school bus. “A school bus is very unfamiliar to students,” he says. “They’re such large vehicles that training like this is required so that they can get familiar with the blind spots and the danger zones around the vehicles.” Hartling says they aren’t similar to a passenger vehicle and don’t have seatbelts so the kids have to learn to sit straight.
Timmins mom Ashley Fudge says this was her son’s first time on a bus so he needed to learn all the rules. “I thought it was pretty crucial to bring the kid to this program basically to learn about how to go on the bus independently and the safety of how to go on the bus and off.”
Fudge says the kids watched a video about “safely crossing the road and also to go on the bus single file, to go on real safely and to sit down.” She says watching her son learn and understand the safety rules also eased her mind before sending him to school in a couple of weeks.