About half of Educational Service District 112’s buses failed state inspections and were put out of service last summer, but the district blames unclear policy on the placement of new tracking devices for the high rate of inspection failure.
During the summer of 2016, 26 of the 58 ESD 112 buses inspected, or 44.83 percent, were put out of service. Records and district officials point to problems with GPS monitoring tablets that were improperly installed in buses as the source of 25 of those violations, rather than a mechanical failure with the bus itself.
According to Washington State Patrol, which conducts inspections, the district failed for months to respond to ongoing requests to move the tablets, putting students at risk of getting caught on the devices and tripping. This year’s inspections show the district has since moved the tablets, and no buses were put out of service for the violation.
Washington State Patrol inspects a quarter of buses in school district fleets in the winter, then all the buses in the summer.
Incorrect placement
ESD 112, which runs a bus fleet for special education students and homeless students, installed a series of GPS tablets in 2015. WSP Officer Jeff Osberg, who manages WSP’s school bus inspection program, said the department found in January 2016 that devices were hung incorrectly and without guidance from the Superintendent of Public Instruction. The devices, small gray tablets, were mounted on the bracket for the entrance door handle, Osberg said, creating a tripping hazard for students. The devices were supposed to be hung near the driver’s cup holder, out of the driver’s line of sight and the way of students.
“They were up high and exposed to students as they walked in or out of the door,” Osberg said. “There’s a possibility of their clothing, their backpacks, their strings or those types of things, catching on it.”
Rodney McKnight, regional transportation coordinator for OSPI, chalked the violations up to a “difference of opinion” on where the devices should be hung and said students were not in any real danger from the devices.
Still, WSP advised the district to work with the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction to determine the safest spot for the GPS tablets. The buses were not taken off the road.
In April 2016, however, Osberg said WSP was helping a vendor at Longview Public Schools install similar tablets in its fleet of buses. ESD 112 serves Longview, and a bus was parked at the same location. Believing the district had fixed the tablets, WSP entered an ESD 112 bus to show the vendor, and discovered it was still improperly hung.
“We communicated to ESD 112 and requested at that time that they correct this problem and do it immediately,” Osberg said. Again, the bus was not taken out of service.
Taken out of service
Summer inspections conducted in June 2016 found that the district still had not properly hung devices, and all buses with GPS devices were taken out of service — though by that point it was summer and the buses were not being used for daily transportation.
In a letter to The Columbian provided with a records request for bus inspection reports in the 2015-2016 school year, ESD 112 assistant fiscal officer Shaun Mettler said most of the buses were taken out of service for one day or less to address the problem.
“Since tablets on school buses are a new technology, there was no precedent, policy or procedure as to how and where a tablet should be placed in the bus,” she said.
The GPS devices, which were installed in the district’s fleet of buses in 2015, feed location data to a central hub, allowing the district to monitor where buses are and whether they’re reaching all their stops.
District officials say the special needs of their riders makes GPS devices, still a new feature in buses, all the more important. The district transports homeless students who are taken from wherever they are staying to the school they were attending when they became homeless. That cross-district transport is required by the federal McKinney-Vento Act. ESD 112 drivers cover a larger geographical area than other area districts, heading into Portland and up to Longview to carry students to their home schools. If a parent calls wondering why their child isn’t home yet, a dispatcher can look up the bus’ location because of the device.
“We do curb-to-curb service,” Mettler said in an interview. “We can see where they are.”
This January’s inspection turned up one of 13 inspected buses failed due to an amber light that was out — the light that signals to drivers the bus is going to stop — and this month, 12 of 64 buses failed inspections for issues unrelated to the GPS.
“The safety of our students and the proper maintenance, care and compliance of our bus fleet is something we take very seriously,” Mettler said.
