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Emergency Planning

Expect the Unexpected - The Lessons of a Field Trip Accident

By Kathy Paul, Principal, North Elementary School, Ithaca Public Schools

As administrators, we are always trying to keep our school as safe as possible.  We have tornado drills, fire drills, lock downs and disaster drills.  But, we have never had a table-top talk or discussion about what to do if we had a bus accident.  I have been a principal for 19 years and our district has been lucky enough never to have a bus accident on a field trip until September 18, 2007.  

Our complete second grade, five classes, went to a performance at our local college.  We loaded up our busses and chaperones and off we went!  There was no administrator with the group when the accident happened on the way back from the performance.  We had four loaded busses.  A car turned into bus three and hit our bus on the passenger side.  Busses one and two kept going - they didn't know what had happened.  Bus four stopped to see if they could help.

The teachers and bus driver did a great job.  However, the students who were assigned to bus three on the way to the performance got on a different bus on the way back.  (This is a natural - get the students on the first bus available and move out of the way.)  The teachers and teacher assistants immediately checked out the students.  Someone called 911 and someone called and notified the school. 

Our assistant superintendent was in the area and went to the scene to help out with students and teachers.  Our superintendent was out of town.  All other administrators were in their buildings.  Once the call came in, the principal from the K-2 building pulled the class lists and started organizing her staff to notify parents. 

At that point, we could not get back with anyone on the scene because every teacher or teacher assistant was helping the children or on their cell phone.  Of course the scanners were broadcasting the accident - so the whole town knew something had happened.  Then the phones started to ring and the parents started coming.  The principal at the building gave phone callers a prepared statement to tell the parents and once we knew who really was on the bus, we started the process of notifying people.

We sent four children to the hospital and one teacher assistant to get checked out.  A few students had a couple of bumps, but no one was seriously hurt.  Our assistant superintendent stayed with all at the hospital until they were checked out. 

The next morning the administration met to debrief.  We were thankful that all things went well but, we needed to make a plan for our staff and ourselves so that our communication would be better.  We needed to assign and delegate communications so that we would flow smoother if this ever happened again.

After brain- storming with staff and working together, we have come up with a plan of delegation and an emergency plan for each teacher to place in their field trip folders.  We also use the forms linked below so that we know what class and which chaperones are on each bus.  Please feel free to change or use these forms if they will help you organize your school.    We leave a copy of these forms in the office and give a copy of the forms to the bus driver.  The teachers feel better and as an administrator, I feel better knowing who is on each bus - coming and going to each field trip.   Hopefully, we will not have to put our emergency plan into effect but we are now more prepared to handle this situation.

Field Trip Information Sheet