Armand Pires, Superintendent
45 Holliston St.
Medway, MA 02053
Thursday, Nov. 14, 2019
Media Contact: Benjamin Paulin
Phone: 781-428-3299
Email: ben@jgpr.net
Medway Elementary Students Practice Bus Safety
MEDWAY — McGovern Elementary Principal Amy McDonald and Burke-Memorial Elementary Principal Amanda Luizzi are pleased to share that Medway’s elementary students recently learned about and practiced school bus safety.
Students at the McGovern and Burke-Memorial elementary schools spent a few weeks during October learning about bus safety. Elementary health teacher Marissa Keleher built bus safety into her lesson plans and taught students how to safely wait for the bus and expectations while riding the bus.
Keleher and other school staff stressed the importance of bus safety to students with the goal of equipping every student with the knowledge of the proper behaviors to exhibit while traveling on a bus, whether it be the daily ride to and from school or on a field trip. With the help of school administrators, counselors and bus drivers, students learned safety practices at a bus assembly and later practiced bus rides and emergency evacuations.
These lessons were aligned with the 2019 National School Bus Safety Week, recognized by the National Association for Pupil Transportation, which took place Oct. 21-25. National School Bus Safety Week is a public education program meant for schools, parents and school bus operators to teach students how to act safely and appropriately while riding and waiting for the bus.
While the schools conduct bus safety initiatives at other times throughout the year, this was the first robust effort between the schools and bus company Holmes Transportation to explicitly teach and practice comprehensive bus safety skills.
The safety skills the children learned over the weeks can also translate to general safety tips that are applicable to many other situations, such as crossing the street or waiting for a car.
“We appreciate the Holmes Transportation Company’s willingness to assist us in providing practical experiences to go along with the safety lessons our students learned in the classroom,” Superintendent Armand Pires said. “We want to ensure the safety of all of our students and the best way to do that is to provide them with the necessary lessons so they can safely ride the bus.”
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