PHS Investigates: coordinating transportation
November, 2024Getting the 3,800 students in the Princeton district to and from school would cause a considerable amount of traffic in Princeton if not for the district’s transportation system. As the Transportation Supervisor of PPS, Donna Bradin ensures that all students are able to attend school and events safely and on time.
In order to coordinate transportation for over 30 other schools in addition to PPS’s six public schools, Bradin starts months ahead of the first day of school to prepare for the upcoming school year. She begins with private schools, drafting routes in April and May, before planning routes for public schools in July, and sending them to contractors by August.
“We have 26 contracted routes, which consist of mostly our public schools and some of our [private] schools. The challenging part is everybody [has] basically the same dismissal time, so I have to be really creative with how I do these routes,” said Bradin.
Bradin also helps to coordinate athletics and events. A contract with Irvin Raphael, a school bus company, allows flexibility in coordination with Princeton drivers. This allows Irvin Raphael to do nighttime or weekend trips when Princeton drivers are unavailable. She also helps to coordinate transportation for Princeton events such as the Princeton High School Marathon, Community Diversity Day, and even Teen Travel Camp.
“I’m very busy, always busy. I have a list of things each month that need to be done, whether it be reports or not, and I enjoy doing it all. It’s like a big puzzle, I have to put it all together,” said Bradin. “I always say that anybody can come to my office and visit just to see how we work.”
With nearly 30 years of experience, Donna Bradin has worked her way through the transportation ladder, from driving buses to becoming a trainer for CDL and a third party tester, before finally landing in the transportation office of PPS.
“I started doing this almost 30 years ago as a school bus driver, and I came from Pennsylvania. And when I started, my two children were young, and I was like, ‘I gotta get a job.’ Never thought of making it a career, to be honest with you, but here I am,” said Bradin.
As a former bus driver, Bradin says that being a driver is easy for the most part, but may encounter many challenges, including traffic, road closures, or bad weather. Nevertheless, Bradin believes the positives of her job outweigh the negatives.
“I know from my own experience, you get to watch kids grow. I try and keep the same drivers on the same run ... I’m a firm believer [in that] because you build a relationship with families and you get to watch students grow up,” said Bradin. “I’m a people person ... I’ll run into somebody that I drove many years ago, and they’ll have families, and they’ll be like, ‘Hey, you were my bus driver,’ so that is rewarding in itself.”
Bradin stresses the importance of being able to connect with new students and their families who may not be used to taking a school bus every morning.
“I know we have a lot of families that come from other countries and their children may never have been on a school bus,” said Bradin. “I’ll say [to them] ‘Why don’t you come here with your child? We’ll take them for a bus ride and show them.’ I love doing that.”