1 in 5 buses violates state law

District audit finds dozens of safety systems disabled

One of five school buses in Palm Beach County has faulty safety equipment that is supposed to ensure kids don’t get left behind on the bus, according to a report released thisweek.

The state requires equipment that alerts a driver if a student is on board, but the school district’s inspector reported that the warnings did not work on 20 percent of the district’s 804 buses as of September. The problem was first identified in May 2016, when two-thirds of the buses had faulty alert systems.

The district said last summer that the problems had been fixed but several buses had non-working devices during the follow-up inspection in September.

The inspector also found that several buses had inoperable security cameras and that a staffer who conducted 392 safety checks did not have valid certification.

The district did not return calls for comment on Wednesday.

At least twice in the past few years, Palm Beach County students have remained on buses after the drivers thought all students had exited. These students had disabilities that may have prevented them from knowing when to get off the bus, even though they were assigned to special attendants who were supposed to monitor them.

“It happens too much,” said Wendy Corso Ruud, president of the Palm Beach County Council of PTA/ PTSA. “So the alert is a good tracking system. But if it’s not working, that’s a major concern.”

In 2015, a second-grader with Down Syndrome at J.C. Mitchell Elementary School in Boca Raton remained on the bus for several hours after its morning route and was discovered by a mechanic in the afternoon.

The driver and an aide were arrested.

In a similar incident in 2011, a driver and an aide faced criminal charges for leaving a kindergartner on a bus in West Palm Beach. The child was discovered on the bus in a school district bus compound a few hours later.

In Florida, all buses manufactured since 2005 are required to have alert systems that force drivers to disable an alarm in the back of the bus before they exit. The alarm blasts if the drivers try to get off the bus without shutting it off. This trip to the back forces them to see if any children remain on board. The inspector general found last year that 58 of 89 sampled buses had child alerts that did not work, and six had non-functional cameras. The cameras are designed to record potential student and driver misbehavior.

Among the non-working alert systems, 35 percent were intentionally disconnected, the report said. Drivers are instructed to complete their own reports before and after each run and note when the alert is defective.

After seeing the inspector general’s initial report, the district said its mechanics moved the child alert devices to an internal compartment that prevents drivers from disconnecting them. Senior staff have been assigned to check10 buses a day to make sure the child alerts remain connected.

The school district has faced an assortment of problems with its buses over the past two years.

On the first day of the 2015-16 school year, 40 percent of buses were late, prompting parental anger and making a mess of the beginning of the school year. The delays lasted forweeks.

Superintendent Robert Avossa disciplined five employees for several offenses, including rolling out a new bus routing system that was not ready. The transportation director resigned.

Astate auditor later found the district paid too much for the routing system, Compass, which it ended up discarding. The audit also found the district did not properly inspect buses and properly train some drivers.

The district has raised bus drivers’ average hourly pay from $12.37 an hour to $14 in aneffort to keep experienced drivers, but still faces frequent shortages.