TRAVIS COUNTY, Texas — Following the deadly school bus crash near Bastrop last week, when a Hays CISD school bus was clipped by a concrete pumper truck, causing it to roll over, seat belts are now on the minds of many parents.
In a statement, Hays CISD said the district has 109 buses on a daily route and that the one involved in the accident was one of 15 older buses that don't have seat belts.
The district bought those buses prior to a 2017 Texas law that required all new buses to have seat belts. The district said it now has 21 new buses that will replace the ones without seat belts.
KVUE reached out to a number of Austin-area school districts to see what kinds of buses they currently use.
Eanes ISD Superintendent Jeff Arnett said his district has 57 buses, 39 of which are newer models developed after 2020. Eighteen others are from 2012, but they all either have seat belts or were retrofitted to have them in 2019.
Arnett said that even though the seat belt law only applies to buses purchased by a school district after 2017, the Eanes ISD community wanted to have them installed in the older buses, too.
“We know that our community values the safety of our children, as all communities do. But in 2019, we had the opportunity to propose a bond referendum to our community," Arnett said. "They supported it, and that provided the funding that we needed in order to retrofit all of our buses with the three-point seatbelts."
Arnett said that kids in the district are encouraged to wear seat belts and practice doing so, but that doesn't mean all of them will wear one. He said that bus drivers are focused on safely driving kids in a timely manner and may not have time to walk back to check. But he wants the community to know that seat belts are available.
“We want our students to wear the seatbelts that are provided for them,” Arnett said. “Should there ever be an accident, then we hope that that will be one more aspect of protection that we can provide for them on the bus.”
Arnett said it cost $840,000 to retrofit 22 buses with seat belts and said that expense may be a reason why some other districts don't have the same opportunity to fit their buses with seat belts.
Arnett said the Eanes ISD community is grieving with Hays CISD.
"What transpired last week and the tragedy that we all observed on the news, while we didn't experience that firsthand, it did give us the opportunity to revisit all of our own safety protocols," Arnett said.
KVUE reached out to other local districts as well.
Austin ISD said it has 551 buses, all equipped with seat belts. Lake Travis ISD said all of its buses have seat belts, and Pflugerville ISD said the same.
Round Rock ISD has 187 buses in its fleet, and only one of the buses that is on a daily route doesn't have seat belts. The district said it has ordered five more buses with seat belts that will go into circulation next year.
KVUE also reached out to Lockhart and Leander ISDs. Both said they are working to provide specifics about their buses.