TIFTON — Tift County Schools hosted the Georgia Association for Pupil Transportation for its annual spring training on Feb. 28.

The training focused on school bus safety for special education bus drivers.

Lanetta Mills, operations manager for specialized transportation for Dekalb County schools, said that there were approximately 75 attendees, 42 from south Georgia.

“We’ve done two trainings like this this year, one in a more metro area in North Georgia to attract those counties and one in South Georgia to attract those counties and be able to get them the training that they need,” she said.

Robbie Dasher, director of operations for Tift County schools, said that it was very beneficial for Tift County that the training was held here because it was difficult for their people to get to the training in North Georgia.

“It exposed a lot of South Georgia counties to this training to make our kids safer,” Dasher said.

Dasher said that the transportation director and assistant director attended, along with shop mechanics and two driver trainers who will turn around and train all of Tift County’s bus drivers.

“We’re going to present it to all our drivers and monitors and make all of our kids safer,” said Dasher.

Mills said that they had attendees from counties that they’d never seen before, which means that those kids will be safer while going to and from school.

The Georgia Association for Pupil Transportation, which provides support and services, including training, to all the transporters in Georgia who serve students with disabilities, was the organization that provided the training.

The training included a classroom portion and hands on training. There were stations set up where bus drivers and monitors could practice different portions of the training, such as how to install car seats, securing wheelchairs and how to use other specialized equipment that students with disabilities need to be transported safely.

They also practiced evacuating students from a bus in the event of a crash or other scenario requiring the removal of students from a bus.

They also used a smoke machine to try and simulate an accident where there was poor visibility, and had the attendees work through how to evacuate students with different types of disabilities.

“I would love for the community to be more involved in transportation of students, especially students with disabilities. Those babies are out there, a lot of them have a lot of issues and they need all the love and support and safety we can give them,” Mills said.