WATERBORO – As opening day draws closer for Maine school children, one school district is beefing up their efforts to keep students safe as they get on and off the bus.

And in a separate program, they’re also looking to keep parents – and students – better informed about bus routes, where the bus is on its route at any given time, and what is happening if the bus is late.

RSU 57, which educates about 3,000 young people in Alfred, Limerick, Lyman, Newfield, Shapleigh and Waterboro, has invested in nine, 6-foot long swing arms equipped with a flashing stop sign that they hope will alert motorists to stop when the school bus is stopped.

School buses come equipped with flashing lights, intended to alert motorists to stop when the bus is stopped. But as most school transportation directors will tell you, some drivers just don’t stop.

“We’ve had multiple passes a day,” said RSU 57 Transportation Director Matt Kearns. Now, that has decreased dramatically, though there have been a couple of instances on Route 202 where motorists have driven around the swing arms, he said.

Kearns looked to a new survey conducted by the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services, which showed that in Maine, with just 30 percent of districts reporting, there were 173 illegal passes in one day. Nationwide, there were 95,319, according to the survey.

The issue of motorists driving around buses stopped to pick up or let off children heightened in RSU 57 back in February 2018, when the owner of a daycare located in a congested area of on Route 5 in Waterboro said that drivers frequently failed to stop for the flashing lights on school buses dropping off children.

“People are trying to beat the (nearby) traffic signal and obviously our area has many distractions, but that is not a reason to not see the flashing lights of the school bus or even the frantic waving of a bus driver, honking of horn of said bus driver, or myself or my staff standing with a ‘stop sign’ almost 2 feet by 2 feet,” said Children’s Challenge owner Cynthia Vermette at the time.

It was that incident, said Kearns, that led him to look into and then purchase the 6- foot swing arms that reach out into the travel lane.

He purchased six of the swing arms last school year, and three more this year. At $2,000 each, they’re pricey, but he hopes they’ll convey the message to motorists to stop for the bus when the lights are flashing.

Last year, Kearns said, there was a decrease in the number of motorists who failed to stop on the routes where the 6-foot swing arms were used. Still, he said, there were two instances where motorists drove around the longer swing arms on Route 202.

Because the district has just nine of the longer swing arms, they’re used on the higher traffic roads, like Route 202. In some locations in the more rural parts of the district, a school bus driver might encounter only a couple of motorists while driving the route, he said.

As well, Kearns said, the district has instituted a new program, called Versatrans E-Link, which allows parents and students to securely view their bus route using a student identification number and their date of birth. The “app” portion of the system will allow parents and students to see where their bus is once the school bus starts to roll, and how long it is estimated before it reaches their stop.

The system, which can be accessed at www.rsu57.org by clicking on the “important school route information” link,  replaces the district sending out postcards advising parents of bus routes.

“We took what we spent annually in printing costs and to mail out postcards and bought (this) in its place,” said Kearns. He said the new e-system can update changes and it is secure in that only those with a log-in can access the information or the application.

“If a route happened to change they’d see new stop times, and we can put out alerts letting parents know about a breakdown or if something on the route happened to change,” he said.

Families can change the student identification number to a password as part of the log-in if they like, he said.

In nearby Sanford, Ledgmere Transportation uses a similar system.

“It’s an all-around better way to communicate with parents in a much easier way,” said Kearns.

The first school day for students in RSU 57 is Sept. 3 for grades 1 to 9 and SRTC students; Sept. 4 for grades 10 to 12; and Sept. 5 for Kindergarten and Pre-K.

— Senior Staff Writer Tammy Wells can be contacted at 780-9016 or twells@journaltribune.com.