Española School District Transportation Director Tito Ortiz floated the idea at the School Board’s Jan. 21 meeting of installing security cameras in all the transportation buses and one of the activity buses. While it was met with lively discussion, Board members need to dig in to what Ortiz suggested before their next meeting.
Board member Brandon Bustos asked a good question, that being where will the money come from to pay for $79,125.17 for cameras? Ortiz skillfully said it was in the transportation budget. Here the whole board dropped the ball. No one asked for the line item, amount or account number. No one asked how much was budgeted. Surely it wasn’t magically $79,125.17.
Bustos’s follow-up question was also good. Is there something better on which we should spend this money? Ortiz didn’t have an answer for that because his job was to present the bus camera idea to the Board.
Board member Jeremy Maestas circled back and exhibiting some knowledge of the budget asked if the funding was originally for bus contractors and Ortiz said it was. The Board later shifted about $110,000 away from fuel and contractor pay and increased funding for supplies and materials and contract services. That’s pretty vague.
So it sounds as though this is in the budget as one thing and Ortiz is proposing the Board use it for something else. Nothing wrong with that since bus drivers are not driving.
It should also be noted this is “spend it or lose it money.” If it’s not spent by June 30, fiscal year end, half reverts to the Public Education Department. That’s incentive to spend this quickly, but correctly.
This is not a bad idea. We’ve seen many times on television and social media when a bus crashes somewhere in the country there’s usually video footage of people/children bouncing around or someone blowing past a school bus’s stop sign arm and hitting something/someone. They’re useful in certain situations.
However, we’d be hard-pressed to find a ticket for someone running through a school bus stop sign or a recent fender bender with a school bus, much less one where anyone was injured.
They would, however, come in very handy to try to get a handle on bullying and general misbehaving by students. Maestas’s rhetorical question of whether there is something better to spend it on should be addressed. If there isn’t, and no, paying teachers more is not a good use, the Board should move on this.
It will take a load off bus drivers trying to regulate students, help with identification in bullying incidents and parents can’t argue their little darlings would never bully someone. Who knows, it could help with insurance rates too.
The Board can cuss and discuss but let’s get to the action part.