AUSTIN (Nexstar) — A bill in the Texas Senate will require school districts to have seatbelts on every single school bus in their fleet, no matter what year the bus was purchased. Districts that cannot afford to meet full compliance will be required to publicly report it to the Texas Education Agency so the state can better understand how it can financially help.
Senate Bill 546, authored by State Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, has gone through some changes. Originally, the bill allowed for poorer school districts to install two-point seatbelts, or lap belts, as an alternative to three-point belts.
However, a committee substitute of the bill filed Wednesday morning removes that alternative, because lap belts are not viewed as a safer option. The National Association for Pupil Transportation, an organization that supports school transportation professionals, released a statement this month saying it opposes the use of two-point belts on school buses and instead recommends three-point lap-and-shoulder belts for any school district deciding to install seatbelts on its fleet.
The bill would allow a four-year compliance window for school districts. Menéndez spoke about the bill and its requirement for districts to publicly report a plan of action during the Senate Committee on Transportation meeting Wednesday morning.
“The school districts must submit a plan of action for compliance with them with a timeline for implementation. This plan of action should include the number of busses that will or will not be in compliance, and what’s the cost to purchase the three-point seat belts. Finally, the plan of action will need to be presented in an open meeting with the school board and submitted to TEA … and then they will, the TEA will share each district’s report to the legislature,” Menéndez explained.
Menéndez said this will give state lawmakers a better understanding of where help is needed most, as some school districts have already installed seatbelts on their fleet.
“So we need to identify those school districts that need the actual help. Maybe we could put a grant program together after we know the size of the problem. If we don’t know the problem, I don’t know how we fix it,” Menéndez explained.
Deadly bus crash kills two in Bastrop County
The impetus of Menéndez’s bill was the deadly bus crash in March 2024. A Hays CISD school bus driving back from a trip to the zoo collided with a concrete truck. Five-year-old Ulises Rodriguez Montoya and 33-year-old Ryan Wallace died in the crash. In total, 53 people were injured.
“As a community we’re healing but we know that some of our community members will never ever be whole again,” Tim Savoy, the chief communication officer for the district, said.
The school bus carrying the group of students did not have seatbelts. A 2017 law passed in Texas required all school buses purchased after 2017 to be equipped with seatbelts, but older models would not be held to that same requirement. Savoy said it’s hard to determine if seatbelts would have saved Montoya because of where he was sitting on the bus and where the concrete truck made contact, but the district does believe seatbelts would have most likely made a difference for other students who were injured after the bus rolled on to its side.
In the aftermath of the crash, Hays CISD officials approved a $4.7 million purchase of 30 new school buses with seatbelts and also approved $397,000 to retrofit seatbelts on 13 older school buses.
Savoy said the district has called for a bond election in May. One of the line items on Proposition A is $7 million for 22 regular buses and nine student activity trip buses, which are specialty buses that are slightly raised so items can be stored underneath the bus. It would be used when groups with heavy equipment, like a school band, are traveling so those items are not loose in the bus during a crash.
If Hays voters approve the bond, the district will be able to purchase its last batch of buses to make its entire fleet have seatbelts. The transition of the fleet is costly and can take lots of time, Savoy explained. He said an order for new buses can take anywhere between 12 and 18 months to be delivered.
However, he said the cost of new buses should not be a new expense for school districts since buses are constantly replaced. Buses usually last roughly 15 years before replacement, Savoy said. And since the 2017 law, any new bus purchased by a district will already have seatbelts equipped, meaning one day there will be no more buses on the road without seatbelts.
Savoy did say this new bill is a good reminder for districts to remember the importance of upgrading their buses. “This is something you have to pay attention to and put at the forefront.”
The bill was left pending in the Transportation Committee Wednesday morning.
