Cardinal Community School District is strongly committed to:
- Reducing environmental pollutants that are emitted by the district’s buses while unnecessarily idling. The unnecessary idling of vehicles emits pollutants that may impact students and others respiratory health.
- Reducing fuel costs by eliminating unnecessary idling that wastes fuel.
To help reduce environmental pollution and reduce wasted fuel the Cardinal CSD has established the following administrative policy, procedures and guidelines for idling buses:
Warm-Up Idling time for Cardinal CSD buses will be determined by the temperature that appears on the thermometer that is on each bus. Idling time for buses will be determined by using the following temperature scale:
Temperature Maximum Idling Time
33 degrees & above 3-5 minutes
20 to 32 degrees 5-7 minutes
8 to 19 degrees 8-10 minutes
7 degrees & below 12 minutes
After idling warm-up time, the bus driver will depart slowly from their parking area and continue to increase speed slowly to allow the bus to warm-up further.
Idling time may be adjusted under certain circumstances by permission of the Cardinal Transportation Director and/or Cardinal Superintendent.
School Loading Idling buses while loading students after school will not be allowed. When bus drivers pull the bus they are driving into the bus line-up for picking up students at both the elementary and secondary building, they will turn off the bus engine. Buses will not be restarted until all students are on the buses and the buses are ready to depart. By turning bus engines off while waiting for students to load will prevent Cardinal bus drivers from breathing harmful emitted pollutants from buses surrounding them and will eliminate the breathing of harmful pollutants by students while boarding Cardinal buses.
Disciplinary Action A bus driver not following the Anti-Idling policy and procedures of the Cardinal CSD will be reprimanded in writhing. If the bus driver again fails to follow the Anti-Idling Policy and procedure the bus driver will be suspended from driving without pay for three days.
Approved March 2008
Reviewed November 2022
Revised