School bus safety is focus in Bentonville

BENTONVILLE — The School Board has called a special meeting after a petition was filed calling for a discussion of bus safety concerns.

State law requires that the board hold a special meeting as soon as possible when a petition with signatures from 50 or more registered voters is properly filed, according to board President Eric White. The meeting is set for Tuesday after the board’s regular meeting, which starts at 5:30 p.m.

More than 60 signatures were collected in the weeks after a 5-year-old boy was left on a district bus for hours.

Charles Carpenter, a kindergartner at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School, got on the bus just after 6 a.m. Sept. 19. His mother, Michella Carpenter, got a call from the district’s Transportation Department a little after 11 a.m. telling her the boy was with them.

The boy was dehydrated, thirsty, sweaty and had urinated on himself when he was found, his mother said at the board’s Sept. 20 meeting.

The petition calls for a presentation of existing and future bus safety policies and procedures. It also recommends procedures requiring drivers to walk to the back of the bus between routes, an automated system alerting parents when their child is counted absent and an alarm system that can only be turned off by drivers at the back of the vehicle.

“We request immediate action be taken to guarantee no child is ever left unattended on a bus again,” the petition states.

“That situation was serious, and we certainly understand parents’ concerns,” district spokeswoman Leslee Wright said. “We’ve done our best to respond.”

District officials will address transportation safety during the regular meeting, but the board will still hold the special session as well, according to White.

Parents who want to speak are encouraged to sign up to talk during the regular meeting’s time for public comment, he said.

White said he thought the 50-person threshold was too low to require a special meeting. Fifty people are not necessarily representative of the entire community, he said.

“In my opinion, the special meeting is fine, but the requirement of 50 signatures is not the right threshold,” he said. “Fifty is probably fine in Huntsville, but it’s not even a neighborhood in Bentonville.”

The number of signatures required for a special board meeting should be based on the size of the school district, White said.

Special board meetings called by district residents are extremely rare, though the Bentonville board also had one called in 2019 by residents of the Lochmoor Club subdivision who were upset about a decision to discontinue busing to their neighborhood.

The district has released a memo from Jason Salmons, director of transportation, that cites new policies and procedures to be presented at Tuesday’s regular meeting.

The memo says the district will call parents or guardians by 10 a.m. if their child has not been accounted for at school; require a second security check when a bus arrives at its final destination; update all buses with Checkmate devices that require drivers to walk to the back of the bus and check for passengers in order to turn off a horn and lights; install new cameras on each bus; and launch Bus Compass, a mobile application designed to send parents real-time alerts when their student boards and exits a bus.

The district sent an email Friday morning telling families the Bus Compass app is up and running, Wright said. Parents must download the app to receive phone notifications.

The app accompanies the school’s Transportant safety system, which includes turnby-turn navigation for bus drivers, student tracking, upgraded cameras and unlimited Wi-Fi with child safety filters.

Wright said a child left unattended on a bus is exactly the situation Bus Compass and the Transportant system are meant to address.

The district approved a contract with Transportant in March.