How to manage school bus aides (bus monitors)

Bus aides — also called bus monitors or attendants — ride with the driver to look after students: helping students with special needs on and off, securing wheelchairs and car seats, keeping order, and making sure no child is left on the bus. Districts often require one on special-needs and pre-K routes, and many contracts pay for them separately.

For a contractor, aides are easy to lose track of: they're often part-time, they may work for several drivers, and their clearances expire on their own schedule. This guide covers the whole job — from hiring to the duties checklist.

1. Hire and clear them

Every state sets its own rules, but before an aide rides with students you'll usually need:

• A criminal background check with fingerprints.
• A child abuse clearance (the name varies by state).
• CPR and first aid training, and often training in wheelchair securement and student management.
• Proof of identity and right to work, and any district-specific forms.

Keep a copy of each document with its expiry date. An expired clearance is what a district or inspector finds first.

2. Keep their checks current

Put every aide's credential dates in one list and set reminders well ahead — 30 to 90 days, since some checks take weeks to come back. Once a month, look at who has anything expired, expiring, or no date at all, and don't put anyone on a route with an expired clearance.

3. Assign them to routes

1. 1Mark which routes need an aide (special-needs, pre-K, or a district's request).
2. 2Pick the aide for each run, with their pick-up point if they don't start at the yard.
3. 3Check nobody is on two routes at the same time — easy to miss when morning and mid-day runs overlap.
4. 4Give the driver the aide's name and phone, so they can call if the aide isn't at the pick-up.

4. Cover absences

Keep a short list of substitute aides who are already cleared, and a rule for who calls whom when an aide is out — the aide calls the office before a set time, the office calls a substitute and tells the driver. If no substitute is free and the route requires an aide, tell the district before the run, not after.

5. The duties checklist

Give every aide the same checklist, and go through it in training:

• Before the run: check the student list for the day, any medical notes, and the wheelchair and car-seat equipment.
• At each stop: help students on and off, check each one against the list, and hand younger students only to an authorised adult.
• On the way: keep students seated and belted, watch for medical needs, and report behaviour problems to the driver and the office.
• At the end: walk the whole bus with the driver — the child check — so no student is left on board.
• After the run: report incidents, absences and anything the office should know the same day.

6. Take attendance on every run

Record who rode each run — picked up, a no-show or absent. It protects the students (you know who was on the bus), answers parents and districts quickly, and is often what the district asks for when a student's ridership is questioned. On most buses the driver or the aide marks it on a phone or tablet as students board.

Doing it in FleetCommander

In FleetCommander, each aide has a record with their phone, home address (used as their pick-up), usual pay, and their background / fingerprint check, child abuse clearance and CPR / first aid dates — with reminders before they expire, and the aide marked on the list when something has expired or has no date. Upload their documents to their page. On a route you tick This route needs an aide and pick them; the app refuses an aide who's already on another route at the same time. The driver sees the aide's name, tap-to-call phone and pick-up on their phone, and marks student attendance run by run. Your post-trip inspection checklist can include the child check.