From: Commanding Officer, NAS Sigonella Dear Kindergarten, 1st Grade, and 2nd Grade parents, We have reports that automobiles passing school buses in Marinai has risen to a dangerous level. Passing school buses, especially those stopped, is extremely dangerous and intolerable to us all. Firmly recognizing my responsibility for the safety of our entire community, I am engaging all who work or live here at many levels, and from different approaches, to ensure the safety of our child pedestrians. As an immediate measure, I have substantially increased our Security presence during bus morning pickup and afternoon drop off. Additionally, we have strongly cautioned Base, Pizzarotti, and contract employees about the necessity of patience, defensive driving, and giving proper due respect to school buses. As part of my engagement on this issue, I have learned that a contributing factor to this hazard is tardy K-2 parents. As we know, our K-2 students cannot escort themselves from the bus at afternoon drop off. Accordingly, when parents or trustees are running late and as a well-intended courtesy, bus drivers have waited for five, 10, or even more minutes. These burdensome delays have caused significant traffic backups, which ultimately have led to the passing of school buses. Another well-intended means to accommodate late parents and trustees has been buses retracing the bus route. This too leads to unsafe outcomes as it results in another bus-run of the neighborhood exposing pedestrians to additional risks. This said, I ask you, in the name of all our childrens safety, to be five minutes early for morning and afternoon buses. Additionally, I ask you to have a robust group of officially-designated trustees who can receive your child in your absence and that they too arrive five minutes early when acting on your behalf. As I outlined during Monday nights Town Hall meeting at Marinai, we are implementing new procedures for afternoon drop off. Our buses will conduct their regularly-planned route and wait at each stop a maximum of two minutes for K-2 parents or official trustees to arrive. If after two minutes the parent or trustee fails to show at their childs stop, the bus will finish the route. Unlike in the past, a second driving of the route is forbidden. Instead, in cooperation with our school officials, we have designated a new waiting area in front of the Marinai Youth complex. This is the only other Marinai location where tardy K-2 parents or designees can pick up their children. In these hopefully rare events, buses will wait with your children for 10 minutes. Once those 10 minutes have expired, as we have done in the past all remaining K-2 students will be returned to the NAS 1 DODDS school bus zone for parent pick up. In closing, everyones timely presence, besides being a NASSIG Instruction, is critical in minimizing bus delays and ultimately unsafe traffic-school bus events. Together, the added security, scrutiny of our non-resident traffic, your cooperation, and the added bus drop off/pick up measures should alleviate most of the factors contributing to unsafe school bus passing. As always, in the event of any traffic safety concerns, please contact our security department at 624-6063 (on base) +39.09.86.6063 (off base) or emergency dispatch at 624-5225 (on base) +39.095.86.5225 (off base) with as many details as possible. I sincerely appreciate your cooperation as we continue to make Sigonella a safer place to live and work! Honor, Courage, and Commitment, Chris Dennis NAS Sigonella Commanding Officer
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 09:36:07 +0000
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