As thousands of children board buses each school day, they're being watched -- and not just by the drivers.
Nearly all buses operated by Northwest Arkansas' biggest four school districts are equipped with at least one camera, according to district officials. Just about every day presents some reason to retrieve a bus camera's recording, they said.
On the road
With many area schools starting today, Arkansas motorists are sharing the roads with about 5,500 school buses transporting about 250,000 students to and from school and school-related activities, according to the Arkansas Department of Education.
It is illegal to pass a stopped school bus whenever its red lights are flashing. Act 2128 of 2005, also known as Isaac’s Law, increased the fines, penalties and punishment for anyone found guilty of illegally passing a stopped school bus.
Source: Staff report
"A camera is a necessity on a school bus," said Dana Samples, director of transportation for the Springdale School District.
There are even some cases when bus camera footage assists in criminal investigations.
When police received a report in May of a man exposing himself to children on a Bentonville street, it was images from a school bus camera that helped police track down a suspect. The man was arrested at his home in Noel, Mo., by the McDonald County Sheriff's Office in connection with two counts of sexual indecency with a child.
The suspect was caught on tape by an external camera on one of the Bentonville School District's buses, said Chris DeWitt, transportation director.
External cameras are good for catching motorists who pass a school bus when its red lights are flashing, but they have other uses, too.
"Say something, God forbid, happened to a child after he got off a bus," DeWitt said. "We can go back and review the videos, see what other people were walking around that stop, what cars were there, read license plates off of it. It's a pretty neat system."
DeWitt noted the camera footage is matched with a global positioning system, "So while we're watching a video, you can look at a map that's on the same screen that tells you where you were within 3 feet when that video was taken."
School districts differ in the number of cameras they use on each bus, as well as the positions in which those cameras are set.
Most Bentonville buses have four internal cameras and two external cameras. To outfit one bus with such a system costs nearly $2,200, DeWitt said.
About 65 to 70 percent of Bentonville's buses are equipped with cameras. The district is spending about $70,000 per year on cameras to get the entire fleet equipped, he said.
When DeWitt started as transportation director about a decade ago, fewer than 5 percent of the district's buses had cameras, he estimated.
Most of Springdale's buses have one camera each, mounted above the front windshield pointing toward the back of the bus. It's been an effective system, Samples said.
Springdale school administrators will request videos from the buses to assist with disciplinary issues. That happens once a day on average, Samples said.
Bus drivers must concentrate on driving and can't monitor everything that happens behind them, making the cameras essential, Samples said.
The district has had cameras on its buses ever since Samples started as transportation director 11 years ago, but the quality of cameras has improved greatly since that time, he said.
Ron Young, the Rogers district's director of transportation, agreed. He's seen the recording systems evolve from the old Video Home System to where it's all digital.
That doesn't mean the current systems are perfect. Equipment still malfunctions, especially when exposed to extreme heat and extreme cold, Young said.
And even when they're working, the cameras can't catch everything.
"They keep making the backs of the seats taller and taller," Young said. "That makes the kids safer, but it hides them a little more."
Rogers uses three cameras inside each bus. They come in handy, but staff members can't resort to the cameras for every incident.
"It can assist us if it's something major, but we don't have time to sit down and watch 74 different videos each day," Young said.
Mike McClure, assistant director of transportation for Fayetteville schools, said officials access bus videos at least every other day.
"They are very helpful," McClure said. "We can confirm or deny something, like a bullying incident. They're not necessarily preventative, but they do help us determine things that have actually happened."
While the cameras offer audio as well as video, it can often be difficult to hear certain things given the background noise on a bus that may be carrying dozens of students, officials said.
It's not just the big districts that can afford bus cameras. Cameron McNabb, who oversees transportation for the Pea Ridge School District, said all 24 of his buses have cameras.
The cameras were installed in 2007 after the superintendent at the time got tired of listening to he-said-she-said arguments over bus incidents, McNabb said.
"Generally it's, you know, one student has hit another student," he said.
NW News on 08/15/2016