Traveling In School With Children or Field Trips!

There has been a big scandal in Wisconsin about a child who was left in a van and died – suffocation and heat prostration.

Last year a child was left at school while his classmates were taken on a field trip. He walked home.

How do these things happen?

It’s surprising it doesn’t happen more often, and it would but most day care centers don’t take children on field trips or provide transportation.

Let’s look closely at what is really going on here:

When a day care – and most are running on a shoe string – provide transportation to and from the center, the cost of using a regular school bus is too much. They buy a van which is the worst and most unsafe form of transportation available because of the nature of the structure of vans.

The day care center places a driver in the van to pick up children at home whose parents can’t get a child to childcare. Surprising they can get to work and play, but can’t get a child to child care. And if they are not going to work, why is the child in day care?

The driver must have a chauffeur’s license to legally operate the van in most states. This is part time work – two to four hours a day five times a week. It probably pays minimum wage. You can guess what kind of employee you will get.

There is no second provider in the van with the driver, because one non-attending adult is a critical violation to begin with. A driver’s job is driving not childcare. If a child chokes, has an adverse reaction to something just eaten, rolls a window and tries to jump out, assaults or injures another child or himself, what can the driver do? But providing two adults in a van to haul children would cost more than it’s worth to offer transportation in the first place.

Reality check list:

If you can’t afford to do it right; don’t offer it.

In this case, the child was two; it was early in the morning; the child was probably tired; the child probably fell asleep and slumped or lay down on the floor under the seat. The driver pulls in at the day care, the children picked up exit the van and the door is slammed shut. End of story.

Reality check list:

There was no second adult to count heads, take attendance or monitor the children.

Because the parent did not accompany the child to the day care, the child could simply be lost along the way in a nap situation that did not register with the driver. The parent thought the child was safely delivered and did not check on her during the day. The driver simply forgot. His job is driving not childcare. The providers at childcare simply thought the child was absent for the day.

Reality check:

Childcare is just that Child CARE – from the moment a child leaves home to the time he is returned or from the time a parent drops off a child to the time he is picked up. Providers need to know where every child is every day, and in a situation where a child is passed from one adult to another, it can become a nightmare – nearly the responsibility of the child.

For a school like the Garden School that takes children on as many as forty field trips a year, there are hard and fast rules that must be constantly kept without fail. Teachers work as a team, not occasionally, but every single time the children are out of the building.

Rule one:
All children should look the same in matching school shirts. Don’t believe you can easily do a field trip in varied street clothes in a crowded area. It just doesn’t work.

Children must be properly attired with good supportive shoes and clothes that fit.

Take a written attendance. If it is a long trip, call roll to the written attendance.
Count heads before leaving the school.
Count parents and chaperones.

Take a sweep of the building much the way you would in a fire drill.
Once the children are on the bus, and it should ALWAYS be a real bus, count the children not once but three times by three different teachers. That way at least three teachers know how many children are present.

When you arrive, count again.
During the trip gather the children often for a head count.
When you use a facility, count the children.
Before and after lunch count the children.
Before leaving any site, take roll.

Numbers always count.

After ten years of taking children on trips as far away as Tennessee and Missouri from Southwestern Indiana, it’s not hard, but it is a matter of constant attention by a staff that is unified, experienced, and trained to work with children.