Back to School a Time to Recall Security

By Ryan Gray

No mention of school transportation is made in an article in the Aug. 9 issue of Parade magazine discussed a way of life many commuters know all too well: mass transit as a terror target. Still, mass transit has recieved $400 million last year to use on security initiatives, a figure the American Public Transportation Association points out is less than 2 percent of the money spent on airline security since 9/11.

Meanwhile, school transportation has received about $7 million in federal funds over the past five or six years total, and most of that money has gone to clean diesel initiatives, according to American School Bus Council members this week, this despite boasting about 10 billion individual students rides each school year, about the same number of riders that APTA says utilize mass transit annually.

Still, as schools start up again, safety and security is a common theme in newspaper articles and TV news segments around the country. But few will talk about terrorism. True, there has yet to be a catastrophic incident involving mass transit or school buses in this country, but the Transportation Security Administration reported 171 mass-transit incidents worldwide in 2007. Public transportation in general remains a soft target for terrorists, yet the funding pales in comparison to what airlines have received since 9/11, about $20 trillion.

Hopefully it won't take another 9/11 to change things.

Update: Yesterday, U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced $1.2 billion in additional federal stimulus grants to transit that will in part address increased security. There has been no such funds for school transportation. The only stimulus money schools have been eligible for regarding transportation services was $156 million earlier this year tied to the National Clean Diesel Campaign.

Disturbing Video on Weapons in Schools

Thanks to Peter Lawrence of Fairport Central School District in upstate New York for sharing this one. Anyone who ever wondered why metal detectors are not on school buses (aside from the obvious cost issue) has to ask themselves what's next in terms of weapons.

Monday Rundown

• Storm and strong winds throw Indiana school bus into building. According to the AP, the bus was empty at the time. Click for more on the storm, including photos of the bus atop a flattened building.
• Last week, a Michigan school bus driver was assaulted by one of her student riders in an incident caught on the bus' security camera. In an editorial this weekend, Julie Mack puts the incident in some perspective, reminding readers that the student was emotionally-disturbed and the incident occurred on a bus for students with emotional-disabilities:
  

  This was a horrifying assault. But it was very much an anomaly. This isn't something that happens every day or every year. To be honest, the viciousness of the assault was why it made national news; if this was happening regularly, it would be just another video.

  Yet many people don't see it that way. As often happens with school-safety issues, some are quick to draw conclusions that are fundamentally false. An isolated incident becomes proof of systemic violence in schools. A whole school system, a whole community can get unfairly tainted from one teenager's awful outburst.

• Short Bus Chronicles offers its two cents.
• Day Light Savings is back. That means early morning darkness for a.m. pick ups. Interestingly, one expert says while darker mornings produce more car crashes involving kids, the increase is more than made up for by the larger decline in early evening accidents with increased hours of light. The Washington Post's Marc Fisher explains the history of day light savings and looks at an alternative two-hour savings.