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State Slashes Funds For School Bus Seatbelts
The state is slashing the amount of money intended for installing seatbelts in new school buses.
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7 Comments 
AUSTIN (August 31, 2010)--Texas Education Agency budget cuts mean that the amount of money set aside for equipping new school buses with seat belts will be slashed.
Lawmakers and Gov. Rick Perry approved the seatbelt law with fanfare four years ago, but now only $3.6 million of $10 million allotted for the program is budgeted, and bureaucratic snags could delay distribution of that money that was supposed to be available to reimburse schools districts in the coming fiscal year.
The law requires three-point shoulder belts for new buses starting this September.
Sen. Eddie Lucio, a Democrat from Brownsville who pushed the legislation, called attention to cuts Tuesday.
He contends cuts should come from areas other than school bus safety.
Latest Comments
Why not do a cost/benefit analysis of TEA. Do YOU feel that your kids are getting a quality education in the safest possible environment? Competent local teachers are being laid off because home districts have to cut budgets to meet unfunded mandates from TEA bureaucrats. The snooze media no longer investigates anything, (relying instead on press releases from Austin) so it's difficult to get any accurate information. How are other states able to provide higher quality education with no TEA oversight. Maybe the TEA personnel should be forced to ride to work on school buses with no seat belts every day. Maybe there aren't enough school buses to hold them all.
Well put, bus driver. Additionally, school bus drivers are going to have to pay more attention to whether students are actually buckled in, with the fear that some parent is going to sue them. This takes their attention off of the road more often. It's hard enough to make sure the six people in your car stay buckled all the time. Can you imagine trying to be sure that 50-70 children stay buckled the whole time? I can't imagine what law-makers were thinking when they mandated this one. It's totally ridiculous. Our children will be a whole lot less safe with this rule in place. Somebody in charge needs to get their head in the game.
I am a school bus driver. It was a poor decision to put seat belts on school buses. It means that the evacuation of a school bus will take that much longer. If your child was on a bus that, God forbid, was on fire, are you sure you want extra time added to that? What if it is laying in water? Yes, it is unfortunate, scary and sad that some fatalities have happened, however a school bus is THE SAFEST mode of transportation on the road today. Those seat belts also have the potential of becoming weapons on the school bus. An angry student can hit another with the metal, can wrap a seat belt around someone's neck. Keep it all in mind. There is only so much a school bus driver can do to keep things like this from happening. I don't think this decision was well thought out at all.
