After successfully lobbying last winter for a new law to legalize bus-mounted enforcement cameras that can issue fines against drivers who threaten kids near stopped school buses, Boston still hasn't actually installed any of those cameras on its yellow buses in time for the new school year.
Boston Public School students will return to the classroom next week, and on Thursday morning, Mayor Wu joined Boston Public Schools superintendent Mary Skipper and other city officials at the Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building in Roxbury to announce new school bus safety protocols with Transdev, the company that operates the city's school buses.
The new safety initiatives came out of recommendations of an independent review that the city initiated after a Transdev driver struck and killed Lens A. Joseph, a Hyde Park kindergartener, when he was getting off a bus in April.
That particular crash is still under an ongoing investigation by the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, but questions about the driver's experience and credentials prompted the city to take a broader look at safety protocols and oversight in the city's school bus operations.
"The City of Boston will do everything in our power to make sure that every child is safe in our city, and that every Boston family is confident that their children are safe at school and on their way to and from school," Mayor Wu promised.
New safety initiatives focus on bus drivers, but not other drivers
Following the recommendations of its independent review, the city announced that it will take a more active role in reviewing crashes and other safety incidents with Transdev and the bus drivers' union, and will improve the training programs that bus operators go through.
But by focusing on school bus drivers, the recommendations announced Thursday mostly neglected a bigger risk – the less-trained drivers who throng Boston's streets and cause thousands of crashes across the city every year.
When the City of Peabody tested 10 bus-mounted cameras on its school buses during the 2023-2024 school year, those cameras recorded over 3,000 drivers who illegally passed stopped school buses with their lights flashing – an average of 2.3 illegal passes per bus on every school day.
In response to those findings, the Massachusetts Legislature passed "An Act concerning the safety of school children embarking and disembarking school buses," a bill that would allow cities and towns to use bus-mounted cameras to issue fines against vehicles that threaten kids by illegally passing stopped buses.
Gov. Healey enacted the bill into law at the beginning of January. A few weeks later, at its January 29th meeting, the Boston City Council unanimously passed an order to formally adopt the new law at the local level – a necessary step towards letting school districts install the cameras.
But although seven months have passed since then – with intense scrutiny around school bus safety – Boston Public Schools officials confirmed on Thursday that they still haven't installed any cameras yet.
"Our team, since the legislation passed last winter, as been working collaboratively with the other city departments needed to develop an RFP (request for proposals) to get these cameras on our buses," said BPS director of student transportation Dan Rosengard. "Our goal is to pilot it this coming school year."
In spite of the delay, the city officials at Thursday's press conference expressed strong support for the new law.
"We supported this legislation and I firmly believe that any mechanism to ensure that the speed limits are being followed and that road safety rules and laws are being followed are important," said Mayor Wu.
"That is something that BPS transportation has been very interested in for a number of years now," said Rosengard. "We've met with other cities and vendors who have piloted this outside of Boston, and I want to express appreciation to Councilor Pepen and other members of the City Council who advocated with the state to pass this legislation."
