A school bus has already started across a railroad crossing when the gate ahead of it begins to come down. What does school bus guidance say to do?

Explanation

Keep going and take the gate with you, even if it breaks. Once any part of the bus is over the rails the only acceptable outcome is being off them, and a gate arm is the cheapest thing on the crossing to sacrifice. Every wrong option parks the bus on or beside the rails while a train closes in, which is the entire message of a descending gate. Holding on the rails to wait, or pulling up short of the gate to call for help, both treat the gate as the problem when the gate is only the warning. Reversing is the worst of the three: it is slow, it swings the back of the bus into ground the driver cannot see, and school bus guidance treats reversing as a last resort in its own right. The related case, a bus already stuck across the rails, is handled differently and far more urgently: empty it at once and clear everyone off the right of way, then walk the group diagonally, both away from the rails and facing whichever way the train is coming from, so nobody is standing where a struck bus will be thrown. What a school bus actually does at a crossing is set state by state; 49 CFR 383.123(a)(2)(iii) makes that body of State and Federal law a required knowledge area without laying down a procedure, and the manual says plainly that the requirements differ from one state to the next.

Source: 49 CFR 383.123(a)(2)(iii)