Bad Drivers endangering schoolkids

"Rogue' NJ school bus operators dodging laws

By: Mike Davis
Susanne Cervenka,
Cilleen Wilson
and Amanda Oglesby
Asbury Park Press
USA Today Network - New Jersey

..... The light was red, but school bus driver Lisa Davison hit the gas anyway.
...... She was only person on the school bus, late in the afternoon of February 12, 2018. The din of rambunctious children had been replaced by the radio, playing Joe Cocker's rendition of the Beatles' "With a Little Help from My Friends."
..... Driving down Tuckahoe Road in Monroe, Gloucester County, Davidson maneuvered the bus around two cars and into the left turn lane, accelerating as she crossed into the intersection with Glassboro Road.
..... The light was still red.
..... At 4:11 PM., the bus plowed into the side of a Honda Accord as Harry McCracken - with a green light - had just begun to turn left. The impact sent both vehicles careening in different directions.
..... It was Davidson's third school bus crash in four years, and her second while driving a bus for Student Transportation of America, according to court documents.
..... Only this time, someone died.
..... "This wasn't an isolated incident. It wasn't an unexpected accident," said Bob Zimmerman, an attorney who represented brenda McCracken, Harry's wife, won a $7 million settlement with STA after her husband's death. "I mean, this happened with the driver many times before, you know?
..... "And unfortunately, something like this had to happen before she was pulled from the road for good."
..... STA has never commented publicly about McCracken's death and declined to comment on the crash, but Davison's story isn't isolated. It's the result of a lax system that allows school bus contractors to put other drivers - and children riding to and from school - in danger.
.... An investigation into those private contractors by the Asbury Park Press, part of the USA TODAY NETWORK Atlantic Group, a consortium of 36 news sites in five states, has revealed loopholes in incorporation, inspection and public contract laws that allow dangerous bus drivers to stay on the road, school boards to award million-dollar contracts to questionable private companies, and toothless enforcement by sate regulators that have let such companies continue doing business after serious, even deadly, safety incidents.
..... The system of bus inspections and background checks to ensure that children are safe when they step onto a school bus is inherently flawed, the investigation found. It is designed to catch issues with drivers and bus operators who agree to play by the rules. But it does little to stop operators who skirt the rules.
..... Companies that aren't forthcoming with the state - such as hiring a driver with a criminal record but not listing the drive on the required paperwork - can go largely unnoticed.
..... While the Network has investigated school busing issues, including the failure to do properly background checks on drivers, at various times since the ,id-200s, little has changed. However, in the new COVID-19 world of school and transportation, the stakes are even higher when it comes to bus safety.
..... The major findings by the Network investigation include:
* New Jersey issued an average of eight safety violations for every bus inspected by surprise, compared with one violation for every 345 buses issue during a preannounced inspection in 2019. But the state inspects only about 100 school buses per year via unannounced inspections, compared with 47,000 buses during prescheduled inspections.
* Those surprise inspections have turned up drivers without proper licenses of endorsements, those with suspended licenses and more serious charges, including a wanted sex offender who allegedly failed to register his address under Megan's Law requirements.
* Since 2017, over 3,000 drivers with an "S" endorsement - a required certification to drive a school bus - have been disqualified from the job after receiving that endorsement. About 10% of those disqualifications were because of a criminal charge.
* The motor vehicle "points" system still allows drivers with a history of unsafe driving - including school bus crashes - legally behind the wheel of school buses, since points expire over time.
* State agencies routinely point fingers at each other when it comes to enforcement of school bus safety laws, creating a "spider web" of enforcement that lets dangerous bus drivers - and the companies that hire them - off the hook.
* "Rogue operators" often rename their companies to retain lucrative taxpayer-funded contracts despite troubling safety reputations. One company, which was later charged with covering up its practice of hiring unqualified drivers with criminal records, reincorporated at least 21 times.
* New Jersey law gives school districts little leeway in rejecting iterations if those "rogue contractors," if the new company offers the lowest bid.
* Since 2014, at least 40% of safety violations have been dismissed by prosecutors in municipal courtrooms, where most motor vehicle cases are handled.
..... After the fatal school bus crash that killed a Paramus student and teacher in May 2018, state Senator Joseph Lagana, D-Bergen, sponsored new school bus safety bills designed to keep bad bus drivers off the road.

LAWMAKERS 'WEREN'T AWARE' OF SYSTEM FLAWS:

.... When told about the Network's findings, Lagana pledged to look into further regulatory changes and bring in the Attorney General's Office on any criminal wrongdoing.
..... "The issue that we have seen since then, with the private companies, I guess the bad actors that are doing those things that you discovered -we weren't really aware of it at the time," he said.
..... "These are things that we may already have the right laws in place, but they're just not being enforced the right way," Lagana said. "Or there's not enough infrastructure within state government to actually track and monitor these people."
..... Two days after the Network published its investigation online, New Jersey Attorney general Gurbir Grewal charged one of the companies highlighted with contract fraud, theft by deception and other charges after allegedly hiring unqualified bus drivers and failing to perform background checks or drug tests.
..... New Jersey schools are required by law to transport children who live at least 2 miles away. But for many districts, owning, operating and maintaining drivers, aides, mechanics and supervisors - isn't cost-effective.
..... Districts find value in paying a private company - often bid as a daily rate per bus route - to handle school busing.

HOW MANY SCHOOL BUS DRIVERS?
AGENCIES CAN'T SAY:

..... State agencies could not provide answers to basic questions, such as an estimate of currently employed bus drivers. A manual accounting of thousands of pages of 2019-2020 bus driver rosters estimated that nearly 60% of the more than 14,000 of them on the rolls work for about 300 contractors. And according to state Motor Vehicle Commission data, contractors are far more likely to break school bus safety laws than public school districts.
..... But that 14,000 number is likely unreliable. The bus rosters, provided by the Department of Education, are required to be submitted to county superintendents, alone with background checks and driver history records.
..... Rosters provided to the Network by the DOE through a public records request were clearly incomplete, with all of Salem County and numerous well-known operators noticeably absent, for example.
.... while a list on the DOE website names at least 1,300 school bus contractors, a closer review of that list shows several that are just subsidiaries of a larger, overreacting company. DOE spokesman Michael, Yaple said the department deals with about 500 private bus contractors.
.... Complicating matters is a nationwide shortage of bus drivers that puts more pressure on districts and private companies to keep their driver roster filled. In a 2018 survey of school districts and private bus companies published by School Bus Fleet magazines, 24% of respondents categorized the shortage as "severe" and 36% said it was "moderate."
..... In 2008, Department of Education reported nearly 90,000 drivers with an "S" endorsement. by early 2020, the number of S-endorsed drivers had dropped to 32,600, according to the DOE.
..... Meanwhile, New Jersey taxpayers shell out an estimated $1.5 billion annually in school transportation costs, predominantly to drive bus contractors.
..... The driver shortage is compounded by the cornavirus pandemic, which has seriously injured or killed more seniors than any other age group. And it's that age group most likely to seek a job as a bus driver, said Evie Wills, administrator of the New Jersey School bus Contractors Association.
..... The pressure of operating a bus company during a bus driver shortage and a global pandemic could lead to further incidents by those companies that NJSBCA identifies as "rogue operators," Wills said.
..... "We may find that less responsible contractors come though this more successfully than the contractors who do everything right," she said.
.... The DOE did not make interim Commissioner Kevin Dehmer available for comment or to answer questions on the Network's findings.
.... When asked about the findings, Christien Lee - a spokeswoman for Governor Phil Murphy - said the bills after the Route 80 crash "closed loopholes and raised the safety standards for school buses and school bus operators in New Jersey."
.... "He remains committed to the safety of New Jersey's children and educators, and will continue to prioritize important school bus safety reforms," she said of the governor.
..... But a number of examples uncovered by the Network show that those reforms may not go far enough.
.... In Newark, a woman drove a school bus with children across an intersection while overdosing on heroin. In Lakewood, a school bus rear-ended a care while the driver, in his fourth school bus crash in tow years, felt the effects of the painkiller oxycodone.
..... One school bus company in Wallington, in Bergen County, dissolved after it was sued for allowing a 14-year-old student with special needs to open the emergency exit door, falling to her death. but the former manager of that company continued holding contracts in other school districts under different names, with school officials unaware of the connections.

'SMALL NUMBER' MAKES SCHOIOL BUS INDUSTRY LOOK BAD:

..... The NJSBCA argues that companies that don't play by the rules unjustly make the entire industry look bad.
..... "If you look at the numbers of school bus operators in the state, their a small number," wills said. "But their impact is huge. The 99% of operators who are having a successful day transporting students don't make headlines. The one who makes some mistake - whether it;s an accidental mistake or negligence mistake - they get the headlines.
..... "That impacts all of us greatly, that it creates a perception that is really not fair."
..... Scenarios like this persist in part because the civil penalties for violating school bus safety laws are paltry, those in the industry say. Penalties for bus companies putting unlicensed drivers behind the wheel can out at $25,000 for repeat violators, but charges that bus companies didn't keep proper records of its drivers come with a maximum $500 fine, under the Enhance School Bus Safety act School Bus enhanced Safety Inspection Act.
..... "The folks who are doing inspection down in the trenches are aware of some issues but this is something that is just reaching the higher levels," said Sue Fulton, chief administrator of the Motor Vehicle Commission. "This has probably only risen to the top in the last six to nine months.
..... "You're helped us identify another area that could be improved for safety," she added. "It's something we started to work on about six months ago, but it's gone slowly."
...... The Department of Education declined to make any officials available for interview or answer numerous questions about the Network's findings. Yaple, the DOE spokesman, said the department wouldn't comment on possible or pending legislation, and referred questions on "needed legislation" to lawmakers.
..... And with some counties dismissing as many as two-thirds of those fines, the School Bus enhanced Safety Inspection Act has become another example of some officials' nonchalant attitude toward school bus safety."
..... The finger-pointing has left parents and children stuck in the middle.
..... Stacey Thomson, a parent of a 7-yar-old Brick student, was surprised by the Network's findings. Thomson, 38, had her own issue with one of her daughter's bus drivers, who she said routinely ran stop signs, yelled at children, "drove to fast through the neighborhood and hit the curb a couple of times."
..... But when learning of incidents in which drivers crashed school buses while on drugs and cases of companies hiring drivers with criminal records, she was afraid for the children on board.
..... "Drug addicts and convicts should not have such easy access to (bus driver jobs)," Thomson said. "what if one relapse and did drugs before driving them to school and crashed, injuring people and kids? Or a convict losses their temper with a rowdy child on the bus?
..... "I believe everyone deserves a fair shot - drug addict or convict, but not when it crimes to handling children. There are plenty of other jobs for them."
..... In light of the Network's findings, Fulton, the MVC administrator, has called on policymakers for increased sanctions to deter private bus contractors from putting unqualified drivers behind the wheel.
..... "All we know is if a person holds a school bus endorsement. We don't know if that person is actively driving a school bus today. [10/09/2020] We don't know if they;re employed. We don't know where they employed," Fulton said. "It is a bit of a spider web to try to get the action down to the level where it makes a difference."

NEW JERSEY SCHOOL BUS SAFETY VIOLATIONS DISMISSALS

By county:
..... This table shows every citation issued for a violation of the School Bus Enhanced Safety Inspection Act form 2014-2019. the violations could include mechanical failures or missing equipment - anything form faulty brakes to not having enough gauze in a first aid kit to paperwork issues

Atlantic 14 - 4 - 28.6%
Bergen 200 - 67 - 33.5%
Burlington 5 - 3 - 60.0%
Camden 32 - 10 - 31.3%
Cape May 3 - 1 - 33.3%
Cumberland 25 - 8 32.0%
Essex 694 - 315 - 53.3%
Gloucester 15 - 8 53.3%
Hudson 77 - 37 - 48.1%
Hunterdon - 14 - 1 7.1%
Mercer 60 - 38 - 40.4%
Middlesex 60 - 17 - 28.3%
Monmouth 60 - 38 - 63.3%
Morris 211 - 53 - 25.1%
Ocean 170- 55 - 32.4%
Passaic 135 - 44 - 32.6%
Salem 10 - 3 - 30.0%
Somerset 109 - 31 - 28.4%
Sussex 3 - 2 - 66.7%
Union 56 - 20 - 35.7%
Warren 6 - 1 - 16.7%

SOURCE: New Jersey judiciary
Creased: USA TODAY NETWORK

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