THOUGHT LEADER
The Impact of Increased Community Violence on School Bus Operations
Written By Michael Dorn P
upil transportation officials have been increas- ingly concerned about the impact of community violence on students, drivers and bus aids, due to dramatic increases of community violence.
The latest FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (FBIUCR) data documents 21,570 homicides in 2021, a nearly 30-percent increase over the previous year. The 5,000 more Amer- icans murdered ranks as the largest increase in a single year since the FBI began collecting the data 60 years ago. While subject matter experts disagree on the causes of
the homicide spike, it is clear that many communities are experiencing rates of violent crime not seen since 1991, when FBIUCR documented a tragic 24,700 murders. As with other societal problems, the dramatic increase in se- rious violent crime in recent years is having a significant impact on many of our schools and, as an extension of the schoolhouse, on many of our nation’s approximately 500,000 K-12 school buses whose drivers now transport almost half of our nation’s approximately 55 million pub- lic school students each school day. With an estimated 10 billion student trips annually, these sobering homicide statistics are bound to have an impact on our nation’s massive fleet of school buses.
Impact On Our Schools and School Buses While it can be difficult to measure the impact of the
surge in serious violent crime on school buses, there are significant indications of increased violence. While some districts have seen reductions in overall student conduct violations, due to reduced in-person atten- dance and improved student supervision resulting from COVID precautions last school year, many districts are seeing significant increases in student violence. Often, community crime such as gang-related shootings are impacting their campuses and school buses.
Factors Driving Apparent Increases in K-12 School Violence While there appear to be multiple driving factors, the
hundreds of educators and law enforcement officials we have interviewed during school safety, security, climate, culture, and emergency preparedness assessments most often cite the following as perceived causal factors: • Students who live in high-risk settings such as unstable home environments and high-crime
46 School Transportation News • MAY 2022
communities have not been getting the positive climate and support they normally get at school, due to extended school closures.
•
School district mental health professionals report a dramatic increase in demands for services while also often facing staff shortages due to increased vacancy rates, staff having COVID, quarantining due to exposure or to take care of sick family members.
• Vacant, reduced or eliminated staffing of school resource officers.
• Unsound versions of restorative practices, which eliminate any significant consequences for many types of physical violence, threats to carry out acts of violence, possession of a weapon (including firearms) and other precursors to the use of weap- ons in schools and on school buses. Distrust of law enforcement officials.
•
• Unprecedented vacancy rates and the loss of large numbers of highly experienced and well-trained personnel in many law enforcement agencies.
• Law enforcement response times of 45 minutes to more than an hour for non-emergency response calls to service many communities due to vacancies. Note that “non-emergency calls” can include an in- truder boarding a school bus and beating up a driver, severe fights on a bus, etc.
• A significant reduction in proactive stops and ar- rests by law enforcement officers due to the lack of support by public officials and their communities.
• Many prosecutors are declining to prosecute violent offenders, or courts are releasing violent offenders with low or no bail. We note that at least one student who carried out an active shooter attack in a school was released on a $10,000 bond.
While there are other factors at play, these are among the perceived causal factors that we are hearing most often in our work with many school districts and law enforcement agencies when assessing school systems across the nation. The damage done to the violence protection approach- es in the U.S. will take years to correct because of the tremendous loss of skilled and experienced police per- sonnel and prosecutors. The lengthy delays in trials due to COVID combined with the significant increase in violent crimes will likely result the progression of many youthful
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