Grand Jury Report Dated June 3, 2011 Concerning School Bus Safety*

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 of its broad implications that school districts do not maintain records in accordance with established law. VCOE is required to maintain and report specific information related to our student transportation program on the "Form TRANS." That form is included in the annual unaudited financial report available to the public and submitted to the California Department of Education. However, VCOE is not required to maintain and report specific statistics related to school bus accidents. That requirement resides with the California Highway Patrol.

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 of its broad implications that school districts do not maintain records in accordance with established law. Each school district 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.

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 VCOE are mandated to collect and report. RECOMMENDATIONS THAT WILL NOT BE IMPLEMENTED.

for collecting, collating, and reporting County school bus safety information on a countywide basis. We agree that there is not one agency mandated to collect, collate and report school bus safety information on a countywide basis if the information being identified by the Grand Jury attempts to directly link student ridership with school bus accidents. Public K-12 school districts in California are required to submit basic transportation program information to the California Department of Education on the "Form TRANS" each year along with the districts unaudited financial information. This public information includes the average number of students transported daily and total miles driven to/from school. School districts are not required to report accident information. However, as the report states, the California Highway Patrol (CHP) is required to investigate school bus accidents. The report goes on to state that the CHP Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System includes school bus- involved collision data on a countywide basis, but does not identify individual information for each district or jurisdiction in the County. We suggest that the existing database be expanded to include the school district or jurisdiction associated with the bus. This simple change to an existing data collection system would provide the public with specific information relating to a single jurisdiction. When combined with the currently available data from the "Form TRANS", an interested party could obtain more specific information on the operation of a public school transportation program. FINDINGS WITH WHICH WE DISAGREE: Not all districts maintain information on school bus safety statistics. Some