Thanks to All Who Helped, Either As a Member of the SBDI Advisory Committee Which Reviews

Acknowledgements

Thanks to all who helped, either as a member of the SBDI Advisory Committee which reviews and approves the PDS or as Master Instructors who meet and plan the PDS topic each year, but most especially to those who provided materials that have been incorporated into the PDS and those who put considerable effort into reviewing this document and providing valuable feedback. For those who did all three, special blessings.

Andrew Dixon

Anne Corwin

Bill Hoosty

Bob Caldwell

Bridget Muller

Carolyn Neder

Cindy Raulli

Cliff Berchtold

David Becker

Deb Stevens

Dominic Barse

Dona Beauchea

Eileen Murphy

Eileen Temple

Faye Stevens

George Withell

James Minihan

Jason Burrick

Jim Brown

Jim Tedesco

Jorge DeJesus

Joyce Boice

Judy Clarke

K.H. Pete James

Eileen Murphy

Kathy Furneaux

Kathy Shero

Lee Irwin

Lee Martucci

Lenny Bernstein

Linda Gaffney

Lorraine Misciagno

Maria Palacios-Hardes

Marion Edick

Martin Dratz

Matthew Conti

Mike DelloIoio

Nancy Wescott

Paul Overbaugh

Perry Oddi

Peter Brockmann

Peter Finn

Robert Brown

Seth Corwin

Susan Soudant

Author’s Note

I would first like to express my appreciation for the incredible job that SBDIs all over the state are doing in providing school bus safety information to drivers, monitor, attendants, and students, as well as, in many cases to the wider community as well. As I begin a five-year contract with the State Education Department to write the annual SBDI Professional Development Seminar I want to stress that I welcome any and all feedback on this year’s materials or course design and suggestions for next year about formatting, content, instructional strategies, and anything else that I can’t think of right now. The bottom line for our training program is that each one of us has the responsibility for all of it to be the best that it can be, something we can only accomplish by working together. Please feel free to contact me either by phone (315.446.6333) or email () or by cornering me at a conference.

Ted Finlayson-Schueler, Safety Rules!

2008 PDS Dedication

The 2008 PDS is dedicated to the person who conceptualized the current PDS materials back in 1995. Annual in-service training had been required for SBDIs since the beginning of the 1980s – but they were called “refreshers” and were less formal that the current PDSs. The first Professional Development Seminar was held in 1987. For the first five years, each of the new “PDSs” focused on a different book that all SBDIs had to read each year and thePDS sessions centered around reviewing the content of the book.

In 1995 PTSI and Eastern Suffolk BOCES were given the task of developing and presenting the PDS, and they did so from that time until last year. The success of that program depended largely on the work of one individual who wrote all but one of the PDS manuals from 1995 to 2006, and that individual is Jim Ellis. Jim’s fingerprints are all over the New York State School Bus Safety Program as the author of both the Advanced Course and the most used monitor/attendant curricula in New YorkState, and as a major contributor to the Basic Course.

Jim set the standard for the quality we have come to expect from our training materials in New YorkState. We certainly would have had PDSs without Jim, but we never would have known how good they, or the training materials that we received with them, could be.

Thanks Jim, from all of us.