Ventura County Grand Jury
• 2008-2009
• Agency Response
Santa Paula Union High School District*
⚠️ Translation Notice: This content has been automatically translated. The original English text is the official version. Translation may contain errors.
⚠️ Este contenido ha sido traducido automáticamente. El texto original en inglés es la versión oficial. La traducción puede contener errores.
Findings and Recommendations 3 findings
F03
Page 3
Not all districts maintain information on school bus safety statistics. Some districts do not track this information at all, others rely on their contracted bus companies to do so. We disagree with this statement because of its broad implications that school districts do not maintain records in accordance with established law. SPUHSD was required to maintain and report specific information related to our student transportation program on the "Form TRANS." That form is included in the annual financial report available to the public and submitted to the California Department of Education. However, SPUHSD is not required to maintain and report specific statistics related to school bus accidents. That requirement resides with the California Highway Patrol.
Related Recommendations (1)
R03
Page 4
The Districts should use the VCOE standard form recommended in R-02, above, to collect school bus safety information, report this information to the VCOE, and post it on district websites. Based on the reasons identified in R-01, R-02, and R-04, the SPUHSD feels these recommendations are not warranted.
F04
Page 3
Due to lack of comparable, consistent school bus safety statistics provided by the districts, it is not possible to determine objective measures of school bus safety, such as incident rates. Thus, it is difficult to conclude that school bus transportation in the County is safe, as previously demonstrated at the national level. It is only possible to infer that school bus transportation in the County is safe from the information provided by the districts. We disagree with the statement because of its broad implications that school districts do not maintain records in accordance with established law. Each school in California is required by law submit annual transportation information to the California Department of Education on the "Form TRANS." The California Highway Patrol is required to investigate school bus accidents and has a database capable of tracking the accidents by county. Both sets of data are available to the public and could be used to make an educated conclusion of the number of accidents per mile driven or per student served.
Related Recommendations (1)
R04
Page 4
The VCOE should use the forms provided by the districts to collate school bus safety information for the County and post it on its website. This recommendation will increase the financial burden already placed on districts and the County Office of Education. Also, the VCOE does not have the authority over the public school districts and private schools in the County of Ventura to require the Local Education Agencies to report this type of statistical information. Our recommendation is that the existing data collection system operated by the California Highway Patrol be modified to collect and report the LEA/jurisdiction operating a bus involved in an accident. Thus, this simple change to an existing data collections system would provide the public with specific information relating to a single LEA/jurisdiction without creating a redundant, unfunded task for school districts in Ventura County and the Ventura County Office of Education. Sincerely, Francis Torra inne Francine Torrigiani Assistant Superintendent C: File
F05
Page 3
School bus safety statistics, for districts or for individual schools, are not readily available to the public. We disagree with this statement. We believe that the public has access to and can obtain all the school bus accident and transportation program information that the CHP and SPUHSD are mandated to collect and report. RECOMMENDATIONS THAT WILL NOT BE IMPLEMENTED
No recommendations for this finding
* This report's PDF did not contain easily extractable text and required Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for analysis. There may be minor errors in the extracted findings and recommendations due to OCR limitations with scanned documents.