This message was sent to all Safe Pass team members on Monday, April 21, 2025 and is being shared here in the interest of transparency with those who trust us with who and what matters most to them. 💚

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Hey Team! 👋

In light of the recent article that appeared on the Cleveland 19 News website on April 16, 2025, we will be intentionally starting a more formal discussion regarding appropriate behavior and boundaries with our students (especially those who are under 18) to supplement the ongoing informal attention we regularly show to this key topic.

While we are all required to complete the Sexual Harassment Prevention course (WBT650) offered through The Ohio Traffic Safety Office annually, the conversations that we regularly have with one another, the articles that are shared each week through our internal Driving Instructor Reading List, and the regular continuing education in which all of us participate (going above and beyond the continuing education requirements as set forth by Ohio Driver Training) support our unwavering dedication to our students’ safety in all aspects of their driver education experience. Our expertise in this area also finds a strong foundation in the training that many of us have as educators and relationship managers from our higher education journeys and previous professional experiences.

The trust that students and their families place in us is something we should never assume or take for granted. Over the past 5 years (and carrying over from my time as a Driving Instructor before that), Safe Pass has developed a reputation for safety in all the ways, including how students feel safe and seen with us and how their adults feel safe leaving their teens in our care. Both are trusting that the kind of behavior described in that article or anything approaching it will never happen here. To that end, we will continue to take proactive steps to ensure that expectations regarding boundaries with students are clear to us, to them, and to their families.

Here is a list of resources that each of us will review and that we will set aside time to discuss through responses to this email and in our next team meeting:

PROFESSIONAL BOUNDARIES - PROFESSIONAL ADVISORY
Teachers & Educators: Student – Teacher Boundary Violations in California
9 Examples Of Boundaries To Implement In The Classroom

​Please respond to this message by Saturday, April 26th at 6PM to confirm that you have thoroughly reviewed each of those three (3) resources. Your response should include at least two (2) specific takeaways from each resource as well as any supplemental questions or thoughts.

My confidence in each of you in maintaining appropriate boundaries and relationships with our students and their families is unwavering. I encourage each of you to continue speaking with your Training Managers whenever you have questions or uncertainty regarding those boundaries and student relationships. If you ever have even the slightest concern regarding a student interaction, we expect that you document that concern or situation in detail in the student’s record (including any applicable messages exchanged with the student or student’s family members) and then to report that documentation to a Training Manager.

When in doubt, conclude the interaction with the student or student’s adult, document the situation, and report the situation to a Training Manager immediately.

Especially during these challenging times, our empathy and compassion can and do motivate us to care for the whole person of each of our students. Knowing what boundaries to establish (and how to establish them), convey, and maintain is key to our ability to do just that.

I’m looking forward to sharing my takeaways from each of the resources above and to reviewing yours! Thank you for all you do to keep our students safe and to support the trust that they and their families continue to place in Safe Pass!

(Please note: in the interest of transparency and to further strengthen the confidence our student and their families are able to have in Safe Pass, this message will be shared to our website.)

​Max Swinton (they/them)
Driving Instructor & Founder
Safe Pass

Ya know what phrase I (like many of the Millennial generation) are haunted by?

Once-in-a-generation

Millennials collect once-in-a-generation situations like they’re freakin’ Pokémon (of which there are still only the 150 that I can confidently recall after too many mornings singing along to the Pokérap…151 if you just have to count Mew).

And five years ago, we were in the middle of adding our latest to the collection with the rapid spread of COVID-19.

Through text message only weeks prior, I had been terminated from my previous position, dealing a healthy dose of fear of the unknown in at least two major ways that I hadn’t counted on at the start of 2020.

I was also feeling pretty beaten down mentally and physically, a fact that seems so very obvious in retrospect, especially as I think back to the case of shingles (!) I developed in February 2020. It was only later I learned that shingles (coming from a reactivation of the chicken pox virus I contracted from, my parents thought, a ball pit at Roy Rogers in the 90s) can be brought on by the combination of stress and a weakened immune system.

So…things weren’t looking or feeling so hopeful or manageable.

Regardless, I kept moving forward. At the time, if you had asked me why, I would have asked you what other choice I had. For most of my life, I’ve been toxically independent, finding myself in near-constant survival mode, which would take a few years of intentional therapy to begin retreating from. In 2020, though, I was still deep in it.

Despite some folx thinking that the plans for what would become Safe Pass were already well-developed by the time I received that disgusting text on March 22, 2020, my interview for an Assistant Manager position at Chipotle (which I didn’t get) would say otherwise. I don’t know how to be unemployed, and I don’t know how to sit still. So, with the gyms closed, I started running up and down Ridgebury Boulevard everyday, rain or shine.

One of my closely held mantras? “Run only if being chased.” This time, I was the one doing the chasing, so exceptions can obviously be made (despite my ankles consistently swelling to the size of softballs. And yes…I bought the right shoes. This body just isn’t made for high impact movement.)

On those runs (ok…some devolved into the kind of arm swinging mall walking of the grandmas of yesteryear), I listened to audiobooks and podcasts about life, leadership, and business for as long as I could before retreating to Lady Gaga’s Chromatica for the umpteenth time. Mixed with a healthy dose of encouragement from folx whose belief in me echos even today, Safe Pass began taking form.

Auto financing. Business loans. Establishing the LLC. Signing a 5 (!) year lease. All while figuring out how to navigate a world filled with more uncertainty than many of us had ever known. (How were students and I even going to be able to share a vehicle with one another when ever breathing was dangerous?!)

Still, we kept moving forward.

And why the name “Safe Pass”? After serving thousands of students and their families, I came to resent the emphasis that too many put on passing the driving test on the first attempt, erroneously equating that achievement with safe driving. (How many driving “schools” out there like to tout how many of their students pass the test on the first attempt as an indicator of success?) Just ask the teen (not one of mine!) who wrapped their car around a pole only hours after getting their license! Safe driving should always come first. Passing the test should be incidental.

Priority 1: Safe driving
Priority 2: Pass the test

There you go.

Over the past 5 years, though, Safe Pass has become so much more than I could have imagined. During a period when it has been most needed, Safe Pass has found its mission in providing an environment in which our students can learn and thrive and succeed and present as their authentic selves. Our Instructors regularly cite their own growth and sense of purpose as proof of our little driving school being that for them as well.

As it has been for me.

5 years ago, everything was so very different for me…different name & pronouns, many more polos and khakis, much shorter hair, 2 tattoos and a bunch of closed holes in my ears, a 70+ hour (for someone else) workweek, and an unhealthy desire to become whatever others expected me to be, striving to achieve high standards of success as defined by those who would settle for mediocre for themselves.

And now?

Now, I sit in the bright and welcoming Safe Pass classroom, waiting for our incredible Instructors to return from a full day of lessons, knowing that they have and continue to change the lives of our students for the better, one lesson at a time.

I’m thinking about the thousands of students and families who have welcomed us into their lives…some because they live close to our classroom, some because we popped up in a Google search or responded to their text (yes…we loathe taking unexpected phone calls…but we’re happy to schedule them!), and some…some who travel an hour+ for classes and lessons.

Whether near or far, we are most grateful for our students and their families who choose Safe Pass with the kind of intention that we wish they didn’t have to show…the kind of intention that requires verifying the safety of a learning environment before stepping into it, the kind of intention that’s indicative of a trust that is earned rather than given, the kind of intention shown by a teen or adult who feels safer around a Pride flag than they do anywhere near a MAGA hat.

Our values are no secret. We’re for safety, education, community, connection, accessibility, diversity, equity, inclusion, and a recognition of the humanity that we should all strive to honor and to celebrate in one another.

While we’re nowhere near perfect in any of these areas, we’ll continue learning from our students and their families, celebrating their stories while continuing to show our gratitude for welcoming us into their lives.

We’ll also continue showing up to fight for those values and for our community. We’re learning to love Market Square Park more and more these days and get so excited when we see our students and their families there with the same mission.

I, like many Millennials, have found myself in more “once-in-a-generation” situations than I’ve bargained for. And I and my team of educators stand on the shoulders of folx who, upon finding themselves experiencing something similar, rose to the occasion…folx who fought for our country, who fought for equal rights, who fought to be seen and heard, who fought for meds in the middle of a plague, who fought for the ability to be their authentic selves in every setting.

And it is our eternal gratitude for these individuals that lives at the heart of what we strive to provide for our students and how we strive to provide it.

Neither I nor Safe Pass are standing idly by; we hope the same is true for you. And while we probably won’t change the world, we will keep showing up for our communities and for the students and families who need us most.

My name is Max, and I’m one of the they/thems you’ve been warned about. I’m trans nonbinary, AuDHD, queer, and other labels that I was told would hold me back from impacting my community and from what some would define as “success”. I’m working each day to educate, to serve, and to show others that actions speak louder than words.

And I’m not doing it alone.

This post is dedicated to the students and families who took a chance on our fledging driving school in 2020…in the middle of a pandemic…when so much seemed uncertain…and to those students and families who currently find themselves in the crosshairs of a culture war (again) and yet keep moving forward, trusting us to take the journey of a lifetime with them…

Stay as safe as you can, friends. All our love 💚

🌺 Max

Our team regularly sets aside time to think about who we are, our purpose as educators and members of our community, and how we present both behind closed doors and in the car and classroom.

The face we show to the public is always intentional.

We think about who our students are and why they choose to come to us.
We think about those students and families who choose not to come to us.
We think about the time in which we find ourselves.
We think about what we would have done during the most tumultuous happenings in history.
We think about what our future selves will wish we had said and done now.

As part of our regular instructional routes, our students and Instructors have been driving past the over 100 protestors at the local Tesla dealership this afternoon. This is simply the irl manifestation of what our students are seeing on TikTok and Instagram. These people and their grievances are so much more than pixels on a screen. And they’re demanding to be seen and heard by people making decisions for and about their lives.

While we do not engage in explicitly political conversation with our students, we do recognize that for many of our students, their mere existence is political. It shouldn’t be, especially in 2025, but here we are nonetheless.

And it’s for that very reason that the spirit of words and ideas like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion will continue to guide us as the Safe Pass community grows, fostering our mission of safety, authenticity, and inclusion wherever we find ourselves.

Some other words and ideas that we’ll continue to espouse…
Pride
Love
Kindness
Creativity
Vaccinations
Mental Health
Black Lives Matter

We can’t be everything to everyone, and we’ll never try to be. For the folx who trust us as they take the most important journeys of their lives, we’ll be all we can.

To our queer students, our trans (both nonbinary and binary) students, our Black students and our students of Color, our students who have recently arrived in the United States, those for whom English is a second language, our Ukrainian and Palestinian students, our Mexican and Canadian students, our students who are members of faith communities and those who are not, those with wonderfully neurodivergent brains, and to any who see the safety that comes with being wrapped in a rainbow…we’re here for you.

And we’ll be here as long as we can be.

To those who would support seeing any human as less than or other…please move along.

Stay as safe as you can, friends. All our love 💚

🌺 Max

I remember sitting on the counter of the house I grew up in...some sort of blue non-porous surface that may have been original to the 1920s Staten Island house.

​It was 1996, and I was 10. I had been driving go-carts for the past few summers (the smaller, slower ones...with an eye on the bigger, faster carts), and I had started to develop a hunger for something a bit more real -- a license.

8 year. I had 8 years, and for some reason, my countdown began that very day. Fast forward through lots of teen angst and more changes and drama than I ever could have expected, and I was 18 with a license. I remember my lessons and my incredible Instructor (whom I terrified by changing lanes on a 40MPH main street without looking 🤦). I remember my test, which started and ended in the back of a shopping plaza, like many Safe Pass students. I came a little too close to the car I needed to parallel park behind...but I passed on the first try!

And what did it prove?

Next to nothing.

And that's the attitude we take with every student who comes through our classroom door, every student who sits in one of our driver seats.

Passing or failing a driving test means next to nothing when it comes to the hard skills and knowledge needed to drive safely, especially in the greater Cleveland area, where oh so many drivers simply assume that the other driver is going to make the safe choice.

(Defensive driving is at the top of the list for us. You can't control what other drivers do...but you can control how you react to them!)

When the student I took to the driving test on Valentine's Day passed on the first try, did I jump up and down to celebrate with him? Absofreakinlutely, I did! And then, we made plans for some supplemental freeway driving because guess what? To that point, he had never driven without a license adults (and safety net) sitting next to him! His most challenging chapter had only just begun.

At Safe Pass, we're always saying that words are hard and tests are bullshit. We stand by that...which is why our relationship with our students and their families continues way beyond when that shiny piece of plastic arrives in the mail.

And we treasure those relationships and that trust more than we can say, especially now.

Stay safe in whatever ways you can, friends. All our love 💚

🌺 Max

P.S. -- Less than a week until we welcome our March cohort! 🙌 Spring is on the horizon! 🌼

A few years ago, I was wrapping up a lesson with a teen on a dark and stormy night when my phone started to buzz.

(And keep in mind...there are few things I fear more than a phone call. 😅 I'd rather be able to see the person for some blunt nonverbal social cues.)

"Safe Pass Driving School! This is Max! How can I help?"

The person on the other end and I connected right away. She had done some research on Safe Pass and knew a bit about our reputation and the population of folx who tend to reach out to us intentionally.

She shared her experience of taking public transportation everyday...how unsafe she felt...the disgusting, derogatory things men would say to her and in her direction...the sounds they would make...the stares they would give.

Imagine that (and considering that you're reading this, it probably isn't tough for you to do!)...you're just trying to live your life, to do your thing, to get to work, to visit a friend, to contribute to society...and you find yourself harassed by others simply for existing as you.

"Max...I need to get off the fucking bus."

She registered for lessons that day. She was on my schedule within less than 24 hours. A month and a half later, she passed her road test and got her license.

She bought a car.

She got off the bus.

Did her license solve everything? Of course not. But the benefits to her mental and physical health will ripple throughout the rest of her life, and some of them were immediate.

Safety above all else. And that's exactly what we do here, each and everyday (Ok...not on Sundays. We sleep in late on Sundays.). We're honored to help the folx who need us most achieve a sense of safety and independence that, perhaps, they've never known.

With that mission in mind, we keep moving forward.

Stay safe in whatever ways you can, friends. The SP community is here to help with that. All our love 💚

🌺 Max