By Joseph M. Morgan
FORT PAYNE, Ala.—The DeKalb County Board of Education (BOE) received a special delivery on Thursday with the arrival of 12 new school buses valued at over $980,563.
The BOE recently purchased the buses for use in DeKalb County Schools, using both Alabama Department of Education fleet renewal dollars along with local funds to complete the purchase.
Eleven of the buses are standard 72-passenger Blue Bird school bus models and one is an International IC bus specially manufactured for special needs children.
The new buses are each equipped with a number of new safety features, including high definition video cameras and DVRs that will allow administrators to monitor and record the actions of DeKalb County student passengers and their bus drivers as they travel to and from school each day or during any other transportation or travel that will take place on the new buses.
Receiving the new buses is good news to the BOE. DeKalb County Schools and our schoolchildren will receive new, safer equipment. Recent studies show that students who travel to school by bus are actually much safer than those who travel by car or truck. In fact, statistically, school bus transportation is the safest method of travel for students to and from school. A recent study showed that only 1% of all travel-related student fatalities in the U.S. has occurred on school buses.
The study determined that students are about 50 times more likely to arrive at school alive if they take the bus than if they drive themselves or ride with friends. Students are much safer riding the bus than being driven by a parent, and are about 20 times more likely to arrive to school alive if they take the bus than if a parent drives them. School bus transportation is the safest method of transportation for students to and from school.
Ironically while DeKalb County just landed a new fleet of brand new school buses, school administrators at high schools across the country are reducing or eliminating school bus services in order to balance budgets.
But the impact of removing bus services in a high school can have a devastating affect on students, their families, even their entire communities. The loss of school buses at local schools significantly increases traffic throughout the rest of the community. When you consider that each school bus takes about 36 cars off the road, the effect their absence can have on traffic in the mornings becomes more clear.
And traffic isn’t the only problem, when buses are taken out of schools, at a bare minimum statistics show an increase in tardiness and a significant decrease in attendance at that school. But that’s just the beginning of the problems.
In a school system where 73 percent of all students qualify for free or reduced lunch, many parents cannot afford to transport their children to and from school each day and many do not own vehicles. But the most important thing to remember is that for many students in DeKalb County, riding the bus to school is the only viable method of transportation to and from school. No buses? No school. Period.
DeKalb BOE should be commended for their successes in finding, utilizing and spending state dollars wisely. Transportation is key to a successful infrastructure in any school district. DeKalb County’s just got a lot stronger. A dozen new buses will do the students of DeKalb County Schools well.
