School Buses Curbed as Fleet Flunks Safety Test

JACKSON, Calif. —  Valerie Hancock thought her 11-year-old son was exaggerating last February when he called with a breathless report that a back axle and two tires had come spiraling off his yellow school bus right in front of their house.

“I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ I figured they had a flat. Because school buses in America aren’t supposed to lose their wheels, are they?”

But when Hancock reached her home in rural Amador County in the Sierra foothills east of Sacramento, the beauty shop owner and mother of two gasped: The road was gashed where the heavy bus had partly collapsed, with a dozen students on board but unhurt, and the axle and tires lay scattered across the pavement.

She immediately picked up the phone and called the California Highway Patrol.

What on earth, she asked, was going on?

Plenty, according to an ongoing CHP investigation of the bus fleet in the 4,500-student Amador County School District.

This week, school board trustees indefinitely removed all 30 buses from the road after state officials reported safety violations that included gas and exhaust leaks, bad tires, faulty suspensions, steering and odometer problems, and faulty record keeping on repairs. And the local district attorney says he is investigating whether to file criminal charges against those involved in bus upkeep.

Parents across the county are shepherding their children to school, driving 40 miles or more one way over winding mountain roads. Each morning and afternoon, normally sedate country towns resemble drop-off lanes at a busy airport -- and patrolmen regulate traffic.

School district officials blame money problems for the repair delays and say they have fired a maintenance supervisor.

Slipshod Repairs

A CHP statewide safety official says Amador County’s problems are extraordinary. Says Greg Bragg, manager of the agency’s motor carrier safety program: “Each year, we inspect every single school bus in the state -- that means 28,000 buses and 800 bus repair terminals -- and usually find minimal violations. I’ve never seen anything like this county.”

Many local parents say they’re paying the price for the slipshod repairs.

“I don’t trust those buses anymore,” says Amy Petriello as she drops her children off at Pine Grove Elementary School. “I got written up at work this week because I got in late bringing the kids to school.”

State officials have for years hectored the district to improve its repair record, issuing repeated unsatisfactory inspection ratings in a county where bus breakdowns are so frequent that a local radio station routinely featured them along with updates on weather and ski conditions. Finally, concerned CHP officers filed a report with the district attorney’s office.

Last week, Dist. Atty. Todd Riebe and several state highway officials warned school board trustees of heavy fines if violations continue. Two grim-faced CHP officers told members that they had never seen such negligence in their combined 50 years of inspecting school buses.

Riebe says no school district in California has ever been taken to court for neglected maintenance on its bus fleets.

“This is a dire situation,” he says. “It’s incredibly dangerous. And it needs immediate attention.”

In March, 29 of 30 Amador vehicles failed a CHP inspection and were temporarily pulled off the road when officers tallied 255 violations. Since 1998, CHP records show, district buses have been cited 822 times.

Amador County School Supt. Michael Carey acknowledges that his district failed to keep proper records, but says the situation is improving. The district has purchased several new buses, upgraded its record keeping and hired a new maintenance chief, he says.

“Did we hit bottom last March? Probably,” Carey says.

This week, the district brought in a team of retired CHP inspectors to examine each bus. But officials acknowledge that it could be weeks, or months, before all of the buses are repaired and allowed back on the road.

String of Excuses

CHP Officer Craig Harmon, who supervises county school bus inspections, is frustrated from hearing “one excuse after another” from Amador bus maintenance officials. “I don’t believe we’re asking too much. All the other districts in the state conform to the standard,” he says. “But every time we went over there, we’d hear the same thing. ‘We’re working on it. We care about safety. We want to do it right.’ Then we’d back a few months later and find the same problems.”

In the March inspection, Harmon says, the district received violations for problems ranging from faulty air bags and broken anti-sway bars to an exhaust leak that seeped into the passenger compartment.

“We issued them invoices showing exactly what needed to be fixed,” he says. “That same day, they brought back five buses they insisted were fixed. But four of them failed for the same reasons. My question was: What couldn’t they read on the invoice?”

Carey says the district recently bought eight new buses, decreasing the average age of the fleet from 17 years to five. He says the district also brought in state inspectors last summer to suggest ways to improve record keeping. He added that the district is facing a driver shortage.

“But obviously when we shut down 30 buses, we don’t do it lightly,” he says. “We’ve got some real problems to fix.”

Trustee Barry Gustafson says the board takes it share of the blame for allowing students to ride unreliable buses on curving mountainous roads that in the winter are often icy and snow-covered.

But trustees say they were assured by bus maintenance crews that the problems were minor and that past CHP actions were merely “a slap on the wrist.”

Says Trustee Barry Franks: “What we heard from the district attorney and the CHP last week about the shape of those buses opened our eyes. I’ll be the first to tell you, it’s pretty bad at the transportation shed. But the school people always sugar-coated the truth. Not anymore.”

Hancock says she’s glad she contacted state officials. “What I told school officials is that if I took their kids on a trip and the tires flew off my car, didn’t they think they’d want to know about it when we got home?”

From gas stations to cozy diners, Amador County residents rued making daily drives to deliver and fetch their children. Without working buses, parent Rich Murphy on Tuesday night had to drive his son 60 miles to Modesto for an away basketball game.

“We pay $80 per kid per sport for transportation, and I end up driving him myself,” he grouses. “I want my money back.”

On Wednesday, 12-year-old Jasper Brown hitched a ride to school from his older brother, Justin. He told of the afternoon last month when his school bus driver pulled to the roadside after smelling a gas leak.

“Man, it stunk and the kids were freaking out,” Brown says. “We had to sit there and wait for almost an hour for another bus to come by.”

He glanced at his 17-year-old brother: “I’d rather ride with him anyway.”