Q. Florida law requires drivers to stop when a nearby school bus extends its stop arm, in most cases.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Drivers often don\u2019t stop, though, which can endanger children crossing the road to board or exit a bus. To help keep kids safe, Duval Schools recently forged a partnership with a company called BusPatrol America to issue $225 tickets<\/a> to drivers who don\u2019t stop when they should have.<\/p>\n Jacksonville Today reader Jonathon A. says he\u2019s curious about what happens to all the money collected from the bus camera tickets.\u00a0<\/p>\n For the passing school bus violators, does some of that money go back to the schools?<\/p>\n A. In short, yes. According to the contract<\/a> Duval Schools and BusPatrol America agreed to in February, the district and the operator split the revenue 50-50.<\/p>\n In order to catch drivers in the act of passing a bus with its stop sign extended, BusPatrol paid for cameras to be installed on the district\u2019s buses. They\u2019re mounted in an enclosure on the side of the bus with the stop sign and record violators from multiple angles.\u00a0<\/p>\n Duval Schools\u2019 first foray into ticketing nonstoppers is a two-year agreement that began with a 30-day warning period<\/a> in April. Tickets \u2014\u00a0a lot of them \u2014\u00a0were issued in May.\u00a0<\/p>\n Records provided by the district show that in May, about 4,000 cases were reviewed and 3,192 citations were issued<\/a>. At $225 a pop, that\u2019s almost $720,000 in ticket revenue.<\/p>\n District spokesperson Laureen Ricks tells Jacksonville Today that the Duval Schools police \u201ccarefully review\u201d all recorded violations before a ticket is issued \u201cto help ensure accuracy and fairness.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf there is any uncertainty regarding the validity of a violation, a citation will not be issued,\u201d Ricks writes in an email. \u201cOur goal is to avoid issuing citations in error.\u201d<\/p>\n Drivers who would like to appeal a ticket can do so through Florida\u2019s Department of Administrative Hearings.<\/p>\n Ricks says Florida law is very specific about what districts can use this kind of revenue for. Mostly, the funds must be used toward the expense of operating the program or other related expenses like safety initiatives and driver recruitment and retention stipends.<\/p>\n She didn\u2019t say specifically what Duval Schools will use the money for.\u00a0<\/p>\n Duval Schools launched a public safety campaign about 18 months ago called \u201cBe Safe Be Seen<\/a>\u201d to educate both drivers and children about traffic safety. It\u2019s also installed traffic gardens at various elementary schools<\/a> around the county designed to teach students about pedestrian safety.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Q. Florida law requires drivers to stop when a nearby school bus extends its stop arm, in most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-308205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308205","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=308205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}