Ventura County Grand Jury • 2010-2011 • Agency Response
Response to: School Bus Safety

Moorpark Unified School District*

Published: June 22, 2011 3 pages
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Findings and Recommendations 3 findings

F03 Page 1
Not all districts maintain information on school bus safety statistics. Some districts do not track this information at all, while others rely on their contracted bus companies to do so. We disagree with this statement because there is currently established law that requires school districts to report bus ridership information to the CDE and school bus accident information to the CHP. Moorpark Unified School District complies with all required reporting. We have to assume that other school districts are also meeting their compliance obligations.
Related Recommendations (1)
R03
Page 2
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. The California Highway Patrol is required to investigate all school bus accidents in the State of California. The CHP database reports those accidents by County. We do not believe that establishing another database, for which reporting would not be mandated by law, would provide the public with better information regarding school bus safety. The Ventura County Office of Education (VCOE) does not have the authority over the public school districts and private schools in the County of Ventura to require these agencies to report this type of statistical information. It is our understanding that, absent a mandatory statute, VCOE does not plan to implement this recommendation at this time. Moorpark Unified School District does not support the recommendation that a new County data collection form be developed. However, we are not opposed to the idea of posting bus ridership and safety statistics on our website. MOORPARK UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT 5297 Maureen Lane, Moorpark, California (805) 378-6300 Response to Grand Jury Report Form RECEIVED JUN 2 4 2011 Report Title: School Bus Safety VENTURA COUNTY<br>GRAND JURY Report Date: June 3, 2011 Response by: Ellen Smith Title: Superintendent, Moorpark Unified School District <b>FINDINGS</b> ! (we) agree with the findings numbered: (we) disagree wholly or partially with the findings numbered: FI-03, 04, 05 (See statement attached.) RECOMMENDATIONS have been implemented. Recommendations numbered _ (Attach a summary describing the implemented actions.) Recommendations numbered _____ have not yet been implemented, but will be implemented in the future. (Attach a timeframe for the implementation.) Recommendations numbered _____require further analysis. (Attach an explanation and the scope and parameters of an analysis or study, and a timeframe for the matter to be prepared for discussion by the officer or director of the agency or department being investigated or reviewed, including the governing body of the public agency when applicable. This timeframe shall not exceed six months from the date of publication of the grand jury report.) Recommendations numbered R-03 will not be implemented because they are not warranted or are not reasonable. (See statement attached.) Date: June 22, 2011 Signed: Number of pages attached: 2
F04 Page 1
Due to the 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 accident 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 this statement because the California Highway Patrol is required to investigate school bus accidents and has a database capable of tracking the accidents by county. When CHP accident data and CDE ridership data are compiled, we believe there is sufficient data currently collected that could be used to make an educated conclusion of the number of accidents per mile driven or per student served.
No recommendations for this finding
F05 Page 1
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 CDE 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.