Year in Review: 'S' Endorsement Issue Top News Item

With one school year in the books and the next set to begin, School Transportation News takes its annual look at the top national news developments from the past year that affect pupil transportation.

"S" Endorsement

Dominating the minds of pupil transporters is a looming federal deadline for school bus drivers engaged in regular home to school transportation to obtain an "S" endorsement on their commercial driver's license. The issue has confounded even the most seasoned student transportation veterans.

"The feds caused too much of a rigmarole with the CDL," Bruce Little , Sr., Colorado 's transportation consultant at the Department of Education, said in the June 2005 issue. "It needs to be on the state level."

NSTA is lobbying the FMCSA to make an amendment concerning school bus technicians, who are currently required to obtain the "S" endorsement, not for driving regular routes but simply to leave the yard on a test drive. New York Association for Pupil Transportation recently joined suit.

School buses are defined in the law as having a seating capacity of 16 or more adults, including the driver, or with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of more than 26,000 lbs. By Oct. 1, all states must have laws that bring them under compliance with the federal law. All but five states have legislation on the books requiring the "S" endorsement provision.
A grandfather provision exists to allow states to exempt certain veteran drivers who meet eligibility requirements from taking the new skills test. If a state has not enacted new regulation by Oct. 1, then the grandfather clause disappears. Meanwhile, the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrator s added the school bus "S" endorsement provision to the CDL manual.

Joyce Gregory

The pupil transportation industry was brought to its collective knees on March 2 when Joyce Gregory, a school bus driver in rural Tennessee, was gunned down while she loaded students for her morning run.

Jason Clinard, now a 15-year-old former student of Stewart County High School, allegedly shot Gregory repeatedly with a .45-caliber handgun just after two students boarded the bus ahead of him and the bus idled in front of his house. As Clinard awaits trial for first-degree murder, Judge Andy Brigham must determine if the boy will be tried as a juvenile or an adult. A hearing was set for Aug. 2.

There was speculation at the time of the shooting that Clinard may have shot Gregory in response to being punished by his school for using chewing tobacco on the bus. He was remanded to a mental health institution for observation.

A Nashville television station reported in May that Clinard said he did not like Gregory's attitude and that he also had planned to shoot himself.

Since, Brigham ruled that Clinard's parents and sister must also undergo psychiatric evaluation. Clinard's attorneys argued that his statement to police at the scene should be thrown out because his father, who suffers from dementia and severe depression, waived his son's Miranda rights. That request was denied.

Following her death, Gregory became the poster woman for the pupil transportation industry's call for increased school bus safety. The Tennessee Association for Pupil Transportation also began lobbying the United States Postal Service to implement a new stamp that would promote the work of school bus drivers.

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School bus professionals once again congregated in Warrensburg, Mo., in May to pass new national standards, agreeing that two-point lap seat belts have no place in the school bus. The meeting, held once every five years, heralded the first time the industry has met in such a way since before 9-11.

Besides changing the name to the National Congress on School Transportation to better portray the true objective of the session, delegates from 47 states passed a resolution asking NHTSA to amend its current school bus construction regulations and forbid lap belts from school buses over the 10,000-pound Gross Vehicle Rating. Instead, the industry said it wants to see three-point lap shoulder belts like those found in regular passenger vehicles to be implemented onto the nation's small school buses to comply with FMVSS 212.

For all school buses, delegates agreed that lap-shoulder belts should be installed at the driver seat position. Specifically, they called on school bus manufacturers to assist the federal government in design and development.

Overall, school bus safety was also addressed. The delegates are pushing all states to implement regulations governing crossing guard gates that extend out 10 feet from the front of school buses engaged in regular route service to force children to cross the vehicle where the driver can see them. School Transportation News reports that school buses struck and killed at least 13 students during the 2004-2005 school year while in the loading and unloading zone.

In a sad note, the industry lost a long-time friend in Dennis Hammell, a New Jersey delegate and NSTA Region 4 director. He died of a heart attack in his motel room in the early morning hours of May 19. He was 53.

California: First in Nation with Lap/Shoulder Belts

Last month, California became the first state in the nation to require three-point, lap/shoulder belts on all its school buses, including the state's School Pupil Activity Bus (SPAB), following a state law implemented last July requiring the same restraints on all smaller Type II (also known as Type A or Type A-1) buses.

Assembly Bill 15 originally required the installation of the occupant restraints on school buses after Jan. 1, 2002 but implementation was delayed by Senate Bill 568. Both bills disallowed state reimbursement to school districts and school bus contractors purchasing or leasing new school buses equipped with the required restraints.

In November, the state school board approved guidelines on the training of students to use the lap/shoulder belts on the smaller school buses.

Bus Driver a Suspected Terrorist

School Transportation News investigated a former Minnesota school bus driver being held by the FBI in the September 2004 issue and discovered alleged ties to al Qaeda.

Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi spent four months in 2001 employed by First Student as a driver for the Minneapolis Public Schools. He was indicted in federal court in mid-July of 2004, where he pleaded not guilty.

A company official said Elzahabi applied for the position on Sept. 11, 2001.

Jeff Pearson, region vice president with First Student, Inc., said the company fired Elzahabi in January of 2002 after he failed to show up to work following the winter break.

Elzahabi, also known as Abu Kamal al Lubnani, was being held in an undisclosed location after allegedly lying to federal investigators about his experience in Afghanistan as both a jihadist and a military sniper trainer in 1988 and 1989 and again between 1991 and 1995.

Elzahabi later moved to the United States to seek medical treatment for a gunshot wound to the abdomen. While in New York City, he opened a repair business, Drive Axle Rebuilders. Through this operation, the FBI further alleged, Elzahabi received numerous shipments of portable field radios suitable for communications in extreme rural areas and reshipped them to Pakistan "and elsewhere." He then moved on to Boston, where he worked as a taxi driver in 1997 and 1998. The FBI alleges he lied about helping Raed Hijazi, convicted for his part in a failed millennium bombing plot that targeted American and Israeli tourists in Jordan, obtain a Massachusetts driver's license.

Karen Bailey of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minneapolis said Elzahabi is still in custody but his whereabouts are top secret.

2005 Clean School Bus USA Funds

On the emissions front, the EPA awarded $7.4 million in funds for year 2005 of its Clean School Bus USA grant program. As reported in January 2005, the figure represents the largest single amount in the program's three-year history at three-quarters of total funds set forth in 2003 and 2004, but the industry says more money is needed.

"It's not as bad as it could be," said NSTA's Robin Leeds in December. "It is closer to $10 million, so that's an encouraging sign."

The Bush Administration originally requested $65 million, with the Senate Appropriations Committee whittling the figure down to $10 million. The House of Representatives withdrew all program funding, at which time concessions were made between the two chambers.

Mike Martin of NAPT said the current 2005 legislation session will be "watershed," as the industry hopes its continued lobbying of Congress will result in a healthy funding increase next year.

The Rising Cost of Diesel

With commercial diesel fuel prices up over 61 cents nationwide from last year at press time, school bus coffers have been hit hard. School districts weighed in on the issue in the May 2005 issue. Many reported that they were desperately seeking additional funds from the school board just to fuel up school buses for the remaining couple of months of classes.

Fred Fennell, the transportation director at Flagstaff Unified School District in northern Arizona, said his department was running $188,000 over its $3.35 million annual operating budget just to meet fuel costs. Meanwhile, in Georgia's Dekalb County Public Schools, Transportation Director Dannie Reed said the district was forced to appropriate an additional $450,000 to pay for fuel and that he expected another $400,000 would be necessary to finish the year.

The Washington state legislature recently approved a new budget that increased the school district fuel reimbursement figure to $0.17 per mile.

Children Left Behind

One needs to only pick up the newspaper or browse headlines on the Internet to find a litany of stories on children being left behind on their school buses, seemingly forgotten by their drivers. With the incidents of student abandonment growing, school districts are being forced to redouble their driver training efforts to limit their liability.

NHTSA's Susan Kirinich told School Transportation News in the February 2005 issue that the federal government acknowledges that incidents of drivers forgetting children on the bus are a growing issue among preschoolers and kindergartner routes. She said that high seat backs and longer rides are contributing factors.

So exactly how widespread of a problem is it?

The feds have yet to study the rates of children left behind. But the media tracks reported cases quite frequently. That's where private industry comes in.

In addition to tracking these cases, companies like Child Check-Mate Systems, Robotics Technologies, Inc. , CRS Electronics and Doran Manufacturing offer child reminder systems that, ostensibly, force the driver to walk the length of the bus and check each aisle for a sleeping child before retiring from the route.

But the impetus for using such systems falls on the individual school districts.

"The issue is not pervasive," argued NAPT Executive Director Mike Martin, "but we take it seriously. Zero tolerance."

That requires mandatory dismissal for careless incidents that endanger the lives of children.

Industry Lobbying Efforts

Slowly but surely, national awareness of the yellow school bus is growing. The three industry associations continued to make strides in lobbying the Transportation Safety Administration and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to identify school buses as high-risk terrorism targets - on par with commercial airlines, trains, transit buses and heavy-duty trucks - and fund federal training programs under the Highway Watch Program.

In March, NSTA met with representatives on Capitol Hill to promote a pro-private sector provision in the transit title of the TEA-21 surface transportation reauthorization bill.

Namely, NSTA is pushing language in the Senate that would fine school districts that purchase or lease non-conforming vans designed for 11 to 15 passengers, regardless of whether the vehicle was to be used for regular education routes or activity trips. Current federal law only prohibits the sale of these vehicles.

Meanwhile, in the House, a provision would add the prohibition of nonconforming vans to state requirements for federal 402 safety funds.

NAPT and NASDPTS joined NSTA in lobbying to include language in the Energy Bill that would allow school bus contractors and the pupil transportation industry associations, not just school districts, to receive grants from the EPA's Clean School Bus USA program.

The Price of Steel

In our November 2004 issue, Editor Bill Paul reported on the dramatic increase in the price of raw steel, and the consequence to school bus manufacturers. The cause for the sharp rise is the burgeoning economic growth in China . China 's steel demand rose 38 million tons in one year, the combined equivalent of the annual steel usage of Mexico and Canada combined. The price of steel surged to $740 a ton in early November, up from $440 a ton in January and $260 a ton in mid-2003. With up to two-thirds of all materials in a school bus made of steel, the impact of these skyrocketing prices is bound to result in higher bus prices. Last fall one bus OEM predicted the price of a Type C bus could increase by as much as $1,500.

In mid-May 2005, IC Corp. was the first school bus OEM to announce a price increase. "As a company, we've tried to absorb as much of the rising materials costs as possible. Rising steel prices are a major factor in the decision to raise prices, however, the costs of plastic, glass, rubber, plywood and other materials used in bus production are also increasing steadily," according to an IC Corp. press release. And how much did the price of an IC bus increase? You guessed it: "We anticipate our customers will see an additional $1,500 increase as a result of the continued materials cost issues we face."

Source: School Transportation News, August 2005. All rights reserved.