The Broward County School Board has unanimously approved a new school bus camera enforcement program designed to catch drivers who illegally pass stopped school buses while students are getting on or off.<\/p>\n
District officials say the initiative is primarily about student safety, but the program is also expected to generate significant revenue for budget-challenged Broward schools.<\/p>\n
Under the agreement approved Tuesday, cameras will be installed on approximately 1,000 school buses. Drivers caught violating Florida’s school bus stop-arm law will receive a $225 citation.<\/p>\n
Of that amount, Broward County Public Schools will receive $85 per citation, while BusPatrol, the company operating the program, will receive $140.<\/p>\n
School district officials estimate the program could generate between $8 million and $12 million annually.<\/p>\n
Some board members questioned whether the district should receive a larger share of the revenue.<\/p>\n
“The part that I have a hard time selling to my neighbor is that we’re giving up 70% of the money to a vendor,” School Board member Allen Zeman said during Tuesday’s meeting.<\/p>\n
Superintendent Howard Hepburn defended the arrangement, noting the district will not pay upfront costs for the cameras, installation or maintenance.<\/p>\n
Under state law, the district’s share of the revenue must be used for student transportation, school safety initiatives and school bus driver recruitment and retention efforts.<\/p>\n
School Board Chair Sarah Leonardi said the additional revenue could help relieve pressure on the district’s budget.<\/p>\n
“I think it costs about $15 million to deliver a 1% raise, so $8 to $12 million moves us in the right direction,” Leonardi said.<\/p>\n
The vote comes as Miami-Dade County Public Schools continues operating a similar program. Last year, however, Miami-Dade temporarily suspended enforcement after some drivers complained they had received citations in error.<\/p>\n
Hepburn said Broward has reviewed those concerns and noted drivers who believe they were wrongly cited will have the opportunity to appeal.<\/p>\n
District officials expect the cameras to be installed and operational by the start of the upcoming school year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Broward County School Board has unanimously approved a new school bus camera enforcement program designed to catch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[506,25530,4432,28,30,29],"class_list":["post-303642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-broward-county","tag-broward-county-public-schools","tag-broward-county-school-board","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}