Ready for School

PINE PLAINS — Edmund Tannini began working as the transportation supervisor for the Pine Plains Central School District bus garage eight months ago. He went before the Board of Education on Wednesday, July 20, to give the board an update on his progress.Since Tannini began working in the middle of the year, he did not want to start imposing changes right away.Instead, he started by getting to know the drivers by holding a meeting and polling them about their likes and dislikes regarding the management of the bus garage. The main dislike noted by most of the drivers, said Tannini, was the bus routes, so Tannini spent extra time developing the routes for the 2011-12 school year to ensure the drivers and parents were all satisfied.Tannini rode several bus routes as both a driver and a bus monitor during the school year. This helped him become familiar with the roads and their characteristics, such as which roads would be too difficult to drive on in snowy conditions and where there are places big enough for a bus to turn around.Tannini began developing the new bus routes in April. He uses a computer program to help him, but the program can’t take into account all factors, such as which curves can only be taken by a small bus and which students have particular requirements.Tannini went on dry runs of the routes to make sure there would be no problems with them. The runs he made have new elements added for increased efficiency and clarity, such as having the same driver do both the morning and afternoon runs for elementary students so the students and parents always know which driver to expect.The first notifications about the new bus routes have already gone out. Tannini has received seven complaints so far and said he has corrected all of them as they came in.Another notice about the runs will be sent to homes closer to the beginning of the school year.Another change Tannini has implemented at the bus garage is in regard to the cleanliness of the buses.Tannini began requiring all drivers to maintain high standards of cleanliness on their buses and also required the drivers to clean the alternate buses during slower parts of the day.He said that while some drivers accepted his new cleanliness rules without question, others resisted or did not take the rules seriously.To prove that he was indeed serious, Tannin; who said he likes to rule by example, let the drivers select the dirtiest bus in the fleet, then spent over six hours cleaning the bus to demonstrate the standards to which he would hold the other drivers in areas such as gum on the floor and ripped seats.Besides keeping the buses clean, Tannini has made sure the mechanics have been working on the buses to prepare them for the semiannual inspections.The Department of Transportation requires all school districts to maintain a 90 percent overall pass rate for their buses. Tannini said that his bus garage has a 93.8 percent overall pass rate.The Board of Education president, Bruce Kimball, complimented Tannini on his accomplishments. Kimball said that the school used to receive a large number of complaints about the school’s transportation, but there have been hardly any complaints since the beginning of Tannini’s employment.“Whatever you’re doing, you’re doing it right,” said Kimball.