Santa Paula Elementary School District Santa Pau Educational Support Center*

- The Grand Jury was unable to identify any single local agency responsible for collecting, collating, and reporting County school bus safety information on a countywide basis. School bus safety information is available from a variety of agencies including school districts, county offices, the California Highway Patrol, private transportation companies and the California Department of Education. However, data are not collected and collated on a county by county basis. As previously noted, a more sophisticated data collection process by the Highway Patrol may be the most effective means of addressing this stated need. Regarding Findings With Which We Disagree: FI - 03 - Not all Districts maintain information on school bus safety statistics. Some Districts do not track this information at all, while others rely n their contracted bus companies to do so. School bus safety information is available from a variety of agencies including school districts, county offices, the California Highway Patrol and the California Department of Education. However, data are not collected and collated on a county by county basis. As previously noted, a more sophisticated data collection process by the Highway Patrol may be the most effective means of addressing this stated need. FI - 04 - Due to the lack of comparable, consistent school safety statistics provided by the Districts, it is not possible to determine objective measure of school bus safety, such as accident rates. Thus, it is difficult to conclude that school bus transportation in the County is safe, as previously demonstrated at the nation level. It is only possible to infer that school bus transportation in the County is safe from the information provided by the Districts. This finding presumes the existence of a nationally accepted and objective measurement of school bus safety. Lacking such an agreed upon measuring instrument, any county by county data would still result in an inadequate measure of school bus safety as comparisons would be insufficient. However, as noted previously, the California Highway Patrol maintains a database on school bus accidents and I would recommend the Highway Patrol participate in data collection that may meet the Grand Jury's need to measure school bus safety on a district by district and county by county basis. FI - 05 - School bus safety statistics, for Districts or for individual schools, are not readily available to the public As of this date, school bus safety data are collected in accordance with current California law and all required data are available to the public through the Public Records Act. While data may not be collected across districts and counties, they are collected to the extent required and available to anyone who may seek such information. Regarding Recommendations At this time, the Santa Paula Elementary School District is unable to respond to recommendations 01, 02. 03 and 04, as they address data collection procedures implemented by the Ventura County Office of Education which is beyond the authority of the District. Should such data collection procedures be implemented, the District will comply with all requests for data regarding school bus safety.