This message was sent to ##Email## To advertise in this publication please click here February 2, 2021 .NAPT MEMBER NEWS Now on Demand on NAPT® ACTS!: How the Challenges of 2020 May Shape Your Future: A Personal Story About Human Resilience Connecting the Boundary Between Science and Operations: Mitigations May Help Reduce the Spread of COVID-19 on the School Bus: Face Masks and Open Windows: Mitigations May Help Reduce the Spread of COVID-19 on the School Bus What School Superintendents Are Paying Attention to Right Now Push 2 Talk Join us Today for Overcoming the Darkness: Shining Light on Mental Illness, Available to NAPT® ACTS! Subscribers  PRODUCT SHOWCASE IR Thermometer with audible alerts The Safety Vision IR Thermometer is used to measure passengers’ temperature quickly and easily as they board the bus or enter the building. Scanning any part of the face or hand, temperature readings are displayed on the LED screen, in addition to an audible voice that states if the person’s temperature is within range. LEARN MORE Thank you to our 2021 Business Partners! NAPT Companies that provide valuable products and services to student transportation operations are critical to the success of the industry. They are also critical to the success of NAPT, especially during the pandemic. We would like to publicly thank the following companies for stepping up to support NAPT as Business Partners in 2021: (Please visit our website for the most current list of NAPT Business Partners, which includes websites and contact information.) ALC Schools AMF-Bruns of America BITZER US Blue Bird BusPlanner CI Solutions Easy Way Safety Services HSM Transportation Solutions Hydro-Chem Systems Hydrotex IEE Sensing Premier Wireless Q'Straint/Sure-Lok ReaXium REI Rosco Vision Systems Safe Fleet/Seon SafeGuard/IMMI Smart Horizons/School Training Solutions SOBRSafe Transfinder Tyler Technologies United Safety & Survivability Corporation Valeo Thermal Commercial Vehicles North America By supporting NAPT programs and services, each of these companies have demonstrated their commitment to your success. We encourage all NAPT members to remember and support each of these NAPT Business Partners whenever possible. Burbio: 'Virtual-only' learning continued to drop last week, albeit at a slower pace than previous weeks. NAPT According to our friend Dennis Roche, President of Burbio, returns to in-person education last week included big parts of Colorado, Georgia, and pockets of the Midwest. The overwhelming majority of schools introducing in-person learning this month had students in the classroom in early November. We saw little progress in 'Always Virtual' regions of the country (more below). To refresh, during the Fall the number of US K-12 students attending virtual only schools started at a high of 62% at Labor Day, falling gradually to a low of around 37% by early November so we still sit above that November low. READ MORE FMCSA's Training Provide Registry (TPR) Web Service Testing Now Available NAPT Beginning February 7, 2022, all training providers will be required to submit information to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) certifying when a driver-trainee has completed required entry-level driver training. All registered training providers will be able to manually enter this information in the Training Provider Registry. Training providers will also have the option of setting up an interface to submit data through FMCSA's TPR Web Service. Testing services are now available. All materials needed for testing are available on the Training Provider Registry Developer's Toolkit web page, and complete instructions are included in the updated Web Services Development Handbook for Training Providers. Technical Questions? If your IT support team comes across questions while implementing the instructions in the Web Services Development Handbook, the TPR Technical Team is available to offer clarification and help troubleshoot issues. Feel free to contact them. Stay Informed We will share with you any additional updates we receive from FMCSA about the Training Provider Registry, including when training provider registration opens (scheduled for summer 2021). In the meantime, more information is available in the frequently asked questions. PRODUCT SHOWCASE Reach Your Prospects Every Week Thousands of industry professionals subscribe to association news briefs, which allows your company to push messaging directly to their inboxes and take advantage of the association's brand affinity. Connect with Highly Defined Buyers and Maximize Your Brand Exposure   LEARN MORE   World's Most Eco-Friendly Bus Wash System Wash a School Bus in less than 5 minutes! Using only 5 gallons of water and 1 ounce of soap per minute, walk around the bus applying soap and the second time using fresh water, all automated. We are the world’s most economical, ecological and efficient bus wash system!   LEARN MORE   Keep Your NAPT® Member Profile Up-to-Date NAPT Now is a great time to log in to the NAPT® website and update your member profile! Once you're logged in: View and update your personal information — it's quick and simple. As soon as you log in, you'll see all of your information and have the ability to make edits as necessary. 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Like NAPT on Facebook Follow NAPT on Twitter Connect with NAPT on LinkedIn .INDUSTRY NEWS Measuring the impact of the coronavirus on teachers, students and schools U.S. News & World Report The Biden administration is set to give educators and school leaders the very thing that the previous administration refused them: a centralized data collection to help them understand the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on students and teachers alongside the status of in-person learning for schools and districts across the country. READ MORE CDC mandates masks for planes and other public transportation The Hill The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a sweeping order late Friday that mandates the use of masks on airplanes and other public transportation as the U.S. seeks to contain the spread of COVID-19. The order, which goes into effect Monday night just before midnight, mandates the use of face coverings at places such as bus terminals, airports, train stations and subway stops as well as in taxis and while using ride-hailing services. READ MORE TSA to begin public transit mask enforcement on planes, trains and buses The Dallas Morning News Transportation Security Administration workers were granted the authority Sunday to enforce a CDC mask mandate for all public transit involving planes, trains and buses. The mask order takes effect Monday at 10:59 p.m. CT and comes as the pace of vaccinations appears to be slowly ticking up amid concerns about how the emergence of more transmissible coronavirus variants will affect the nation's efforts to crush the pandemic. READ MORE COVID-19 pandemic pushes more parents to go all-in for home schooling The Wall Street Journal As parents grow increasingly frustrated with remote learning during the pandemic, some are deciding to pull their children out of school and try teaching on their own. In North Carolina, the state's home-school monitoring website crashed on the first day of enrollment, and more than 18,800 families filed to operate a home-school from July 1 to Jan. 22 — more than double the school-year before, according to the state Division of Non-Public Education. In Connecticut, the number of students who left public schools to be home-schooled jumped fivefold this school year, to 3,500. In Nebraska, the number of home-schooled students jumped 56%, to 13,426, according to state education officials. READ MORE School bus company says South Allegheny School District owes more than $800K KDKA-TV A school bus company says it'll no longer serve the South Allegheny School District. Sun Coach Lines says South Allegheny owes it more than $800,000 dollars. Sun Coach says the district hasn't paid it since instruction went virtual at the beginning of the pandemic, even though it says the district could have received money for transportation from the CARES Act. READ MORE Carlson joins NHTSA as chief counsel UCLA School of Law UCLA School of Law Professor Ann Carlson has been appointed to serve as the chief counsel of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the federal agency that has joint authority with the Environmental Protection Agency over car and truck greenhouse gas standards. Carlson is the Shirley Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law and faculty co-director of UCLA Law's Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. She will take a leave of absence from UCLA Law to perform her governmental duties. READ MORE COVID disrupts lives of school bus drivers and cafeteria workers, from erratic schedules to pay cuts and health concerns NJ.com Every single day. That's how often a New Jersey school bus driver who has worked since the coronavirus pandemic swept across the state said she fears for her health. "My husband is at home recovering from a stroke," Chrissy Kozar, who works for the Washington Township Public Schools District in Warren County, said. "He's immunocompromised; he was on dialysis a couple of years ago. So I can't afford to bring this home to him ... But I need my salary." READ MORE New CDC research backs Biden push for in-person schooling Education Week Research released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is adding fuel to the Biden administration’s push for school districts to return to in-person instruction, even amid the latest wave of the pandemic. READ MORE Indianapolis Public Schools weighs eliminating school bus service for some students Chalkbeat Indianapolis Public Schools may eliminate school busing for about one-third of its students next school year, administrators indicated, in order to save as much as $17 million. District administrators propose cutting transportation for high school students who live on city bus lines and reducing it for elementary school students who live close enough to walk to schools. If the board approves the most drastic cuts, about 5,600 high school students and 4,000 elementary school students could lose district-provided transportation. READ MORE Schools are not key drivers of COVID-19 transmission — If safety measures are in place Forbes Schools are not key drivers of Covid-19 transmission, according to a study that strengthens the case for full re-opening. Researchers found fewer than one in 20 Covid-19 infections among students and staff were acquired in schools and there were no recorded instances of child-to-adult transmission in school, even when the coronavirus was widespread in the community. With millions of children out of school around the world, the findings provide evidence that fully reopening schools may not necessarily lead to a spike in cases. READ MORE Why Michigan classrooms are reopening even though the pandemic is far from over Chalkbeat COVID-19 case rates are higher today than they were on the first day of school in September. Yet across the state, districts that stayed closed in September are opening their classrooms, in many cases for the first time since March. What changed? The fall season gave Michigan a chance to see what happened when schools opened their doors — and what happened to students' learning and emotional well-being when they were stuck at home. READ MORE CDC researchers see little evidence in-person school drives COVID-19 infection Reuters Studies in the United States and abroad found little evidence schools were spreading COVID-19 infections, showing a "path forward" to in-person classes, researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The risk of catching COVID-19 in schools and whether to allow in-person learning or stick with online classes has been a hot topic of debate in many countries, including the United States. READ MORE Education pick Miguel Cardona on Biden's promise to reopen schools NPR With many U.S. schools still shuttered or operating on a limited basis, and millions of children learning remotely (or trying to), the stakes are high for Miguel Cardona. He is President Biden's pick to run the U.S. Department of Education, and if confirmed, he'll be charged with making good on Biden's promise to re-open most K-12 schools during the new administration's first 100 days. READ MORE 3 paths to becoming a more empathic leader Inc. Empathy for your team is more important than ever. People are juggling work and kids with life during the COVID-19 pandemic, and many of us are buckling under the pressure. An estimated 865,000 women dropped out of the workforce in September 2020 alone as they struggled with work/life balance. READ MORE Lawmakers push $75 billion for learning recovery among trio of COVID-19 bills Education Week Congressional Democrats are proposing $75 billion over two years to help schools reengage with missing students, and to help them diagnose and address learning interruptions and other issues caused by the coronavirus pandemic. READ MORE What Biden's early executive orders mean for K-12 K-12 DIVE President Joe Biden signed more than a dozen executive orders shortly after his inauguration and additional orders the next day, including a handful with implications for K-12. Education organizations including the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers have welcomed Biden's directives. While executive orders can sometimes have the effect of federal law, they can also be overturned by laws passed in Congress, which are then subject to presidential veto. READ MORE Finding ways to lead amid the pandemic EdTech Magazine Challenges of leadership have been at the center of the education discussion over the past year, as the pandemic has reshaped lesson plans, timetables and classrooms. There's been constant concern about students being left behind. Douglas Konopelko, an education strategist for CDW, says that administrators need to make sure that educators and staff members aren't left behind either. READ MORE Now is a great time to start practicing mindfulness Harvard Business Review Anger, fear and grief have always been present in our lives and affected the way we work, but rarely as much as during a global pandemic. Mindfulness is one of the most accessible tools at our disposal to deal with these hard-to-have feelings productively. READ MORE Maintaining resilience through COVID-19 eSchool News People fear the unknown more than they fear change–and teachers, students and parents don't necessarily want to rush back to "normal" education unless education leaders can tell them what "normal" will look like. As he opened FETC (virtual for the first time in 41 years), Marcus Buckingham, head of the ADP Research Institute – People & Performance, noted that the unknown and ambiguity won't help build resilience in teachers and students post-COVID. READ MORE Did you know that good intentions can defeat you Leadership Freak Bocelli sings like an angel, but he was wrong when he said, "All that counts in life is intention." "The smallest deed is better than the greatest intention." Intending is a necessary beginning. The path to achieving leadership development goals begins with "goal-intention." Only the most pathetic leaders don't intend to improve their leadership. Goal-intentions require a how, when, and where. Gollwizer and Brandstatter label it, "implementation intention." READ MORE Leaders: Will you win the race or fall at the final hurdle? The Lead Change Group No-one doubts that the current pandemic has created all kinds of challenges for leaders and the businesses they lead. Some have fallen by the wayside, including some big-name brands, but in the main many businesses have so far survived – many just by the edge of their teeth. And whilst some might be thinking of celebrating this success, I would caution that because there are still some challenges looming on the horizon, which if not addressed could cause your business to fall at the final hurdle. READ MORE Humor is such an important leadership trait we teach it at Stanford's business school Fast Company In the quaint days of yore, inspirational leaders possessed some unique combination of intelligence, bravery, charisma, moral superiority and cunning resolve. Ernest Shackleton drifted on sheets of ice for months to rescue his stranded crew from the Antarctic sea. Harriet Tubman courageously led some 300 slaves to freedom over a decade. Marco Polo traveled across the mountains of Asia and inspired generations of children to venture blindly across swimming pools. READ MORE   NAPT Dispatch Connect with NAPT Jason Zimmerman, Director of Publishing, MultiView, 469-420-2686 | Download media kit Hailey Golden, Senior Education Editor, 469-420-2630| Contribute news National Association of Pupil Transportation 1840 Western Avenue  |  Albany, NY 12203  518-452-3611  |  Contact Us  |  www.napt.org Click here to unsubscribe.  Learn how to add us to your safe sender list so our emails get to your inbox. ADVERTISE SUBSCRIBE PAST ISSUES   7701 Las Colinas Ridge, Ste. 800, Irving, TX 75063