“Te student can hear that coming across the radio and you can see him wonder, ‘How in the world could they see what I’m doing?’” added Poag, the coordinator of routing and scheduling for Greenville County Schools in South Carolina. Capturing irrefutable evidence of incidents on the school bus or how the vehicle was being operated was difficult enough, if not impossible, in the past. Now, it’s just another day at the office, though district employees across the country still find themselves scrolling through hours of video each day and many bullying episodes and other onboard incidents still go unnoticed until a parent or someone else shares them with the media. Tose situations promise to be left in the past as the market delivers and fine-tunes surveillance systems that troubleshoot themselves and send flagged incidents to designated recipients. Te already healthy state of video is getting better all the time. “It’s constantly evolving,” said Mike
Guzallis, sales engineer for Omaha, Nebraska-based REI. Tat’s because end users deliver a never-ending stream of suggestions to improve equipment, and manufacturers work at a feverish pace to deliver better and better products to the market ahead of the competition. Phil Medved, vehicle maintenance
supervisor with the Poway Unified School District north of San Diego, said he appreciates the benefits of that ongoing technology arms race. About 90 of the Southern California district’s 150 buses allow the staff to monitor surveillance systems to ensure they are working and footage is always ready for download. “Te worst thing to find out you don’t have video is when you need it,” Medved said. Te wireless video system’s troubleshooting ability saves time and money by ensuring continuity of service. “Our safety and training department goes online and we just double check once a day. Tat gives us a health report on all video,” Medved said. “If it says we’re not getting a report from camera two, we have a couple guys who are really good at resolving the issue. “What’s nice about online, there’s no equipment to pull or sending a bus out without video. And, as soon as they hit our lot, we can get video. It’s very seamless. From a maintenance standpoint, the best
44 School Transportation News • MARCH 2018
Value of Video Increases on
Special Needs Routes While capturing irrefutable evidence of bullying, improper vehicle operation and other incidents is important on any bus routes, it’s doubly important to gather such data on buses transporting students with specials needs, several fleet man- agers noted. “We have a number of non-verbal students. While other children will go home
and tell their parents about an incident, many students with special needs aren’t able to do that,” said Rafael Salazar, Jr., director of transportation at Northside Inde- pendent School District in San Antonio, Texas. “We have to depend on something to tip us off and we often have to go back and do more research into an incident.” Salazar said such incidents are particularly challenging when a reporting delay
has occurred. “Once we know something has gone on, we’ll burn it to a DVD so we don’t lose it,” he explained. “From there, we give it to the appropriate person, whether that’s a principal, human resources or the police.” Neal Abramson, director of transportation of the Santa Monica-Malibu (Calif.) Unified School District, oversaw the installation of video cameras about eight years ago when purchasing newer buses with lap and shoulder restraints and higher seat backs that made it more difficult for drivers to see students. He indicated the most common use of video on special needs buses is for investi-
gating behavioral incidents, likening the process to forensics. “There are times when we might have two or three things happen in a week where we’ll need to review video and then we may go six months where nothing happens,” Abramson said. His district, like Salazar’s, has a privacy policy of prohibiting parents and other non-school personnel from viewing video. In the rare instances where Abramson does allow a parent to view a video, he uses pixilation technology to conceal other students’ identities. “We have a strict chain of custody. I’m the only one in possession of the video. I only show the video. I don’t make copies,” he said. “I will keep it on file for a year and then destroy it.” Abramson cautions against emailing video of incidents, whether they involved
students with special needs or students involved in incidents on other routes. But, he has found still images can be just as effective in making a point. “During the first couple years when we had cameras on new buses, we had some vandalism. I didn’t send video, but I did take a screen shot and send it along with a bill to the parents,” he said. “They paid the bill. Cameras really do work.” Salazar said parents of special needs students in his district are, for the most part,
very accepting of the privacy policy. “When our principals talk to them about an incident, they believe the principals,” Salazar said. “In 15 years, I can count on one hand the number of times a parent saw a video.” Abramson said he could envision instances where video from buses transporting special needs students could be used for training purposes, but the district has yet to use it for this purpose. Meanwhile, video of an incident on one of Salazar’s buses uncovered a non-ver- bal child being inadvertently left on the bus beyond his stop. It was shown to the driving team. “It was a training opportunity. We were able to show how and where the mistake was made to help them become better drivers,” he said.
Neal Abramson, director of transportation for Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, said he uses video for “forensic investigations” special needs issues.
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