{"id":270934,"date":"2026-04-29T05:40:44","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T05:40:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/270934\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T05:40:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T05:40:44","slug":"dripping-springs-isd-spends-4-4m-to-improve-bus-safety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/270934\/","title":{"rendered":"Dripping Springs ISD spends $4.4M to improve bus safety"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Dripping Springs ISD<\/a> bus fleet is now in 100% compliance with Senate Bill 546<\/a>, which requires all public school-operated buses to be equipped with three-point seat belts.<\/p>\n

DSISD Chief Operations Officer Scott Berry gave an SB 546 Transportation Report<\/a> at an April 27 meeting.<\/p>\n

At a glance<\/p>\n

DSISD replaced 16 buses and retrofitted 37. Retrofitting is the process of removing old seats and replacing them with seats equipped with three-point seat belts. This process occurred over several years and cost the district $4.4 million.<\/p>\n

\"chart<\/p>\n

By the numbers<\/p>\n

District officials planned to fund buses with the 2023<\/a> and 2025<\/a> voter-approved bonds. The 2023 bond provided approximately $2 million for bus replacement, and the 2025 bond provided roughly $6 million for transportation, including seat belts and bus replacement.<\/p>\n

\"table\"table<\/p>\n

How we got here<\/p>\n

In 2017, the Texas Senate passed Senate Bill 693<\/a>, which mandated that any bus manufactured in 2018 or later would require a three-point seat belt. The bill did not require retrofitting, and there were budgetary exemptions.<\/p>\n

The Texas Senate passed SB 546 in the 2025 legislative session, which requires all buses in a district\u2019s fleet to be fitted with three-point seat belts, regardless of the model year. Older buses without the proper safety equipment must either be replaced or retrofitted.<\/p>\n

School districts must be in compliance with the law by Sept. 1, 2029. To facilitate this, the Texas Education Agency set guidelines<\/a>, including requirements for reporting the status of buses and the estimated cost.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dripping Springs ISD bus fleet is now in 100% compliance with Senate Bill 546, which requires all…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,76893,52549,100850],"class_list":["post-270934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-buses","tag-dripping-springs-isd","tag-senate-bill-546"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}