Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine visits Northeast Ohio to talk school bus safety

Gov. Mike DeWine came to Mentor Public School District’s school bus garage Aug. 30 to witness a shortened version of the school bus inspection process carried out on Ohio’s 19,200 school buses twice a year.

The demonstration by inspectors from the Ohio State Highway Patrol comes in the wake of DeWine announcing the formation of an Ohio School Bus Safety Working Group.

That followed an incident that occurred in Aug. 22 in Clark County where 11-year-old Aiden Clark was killed after being ejected from the school bus, according to a statement from the Ohio State Highway Patrol.

The 13-member group includes David Russell, a bus driver for the South Euclid Lyndhurst School District.

The group will examine existing recommendations for school bus safety and also provide public meetings where experts will be brought in for discussion.

The group will, according to DeWine, meet at least five times and come up with a report to be presented by December.

“The school buses are inspected twice a year, the bus driver also everyday has to include a protocol,” DeWine said. “Buses are the safest form of transportation for our kids, we had a horrible, horrible, tragedy in Clark County this week.

“What I’m announcing today is the formation of a working task force to look at, from a holistic point of view, is there anything else that we can do to make the rides of our kids and our school kids safer every single day,” DeWine added. “We go into this with no preconceptions. We are going to look at every aspect of this, from constitution of the buses to the maintenance to the inspections.”

One issue is how funding will be supplied to schools following the recommendations the task force might find.

“We first have to follow the science, follow the data,” DeWine said. “Then when we get that back, then we will have to move and do the things that the recommendation says that we should be doing. So, we will cross that bridge when we get to it but we are ready to cross that bridge.”

While the Ohio School Bus Working Group can offer recommendations, the group would have no way of mandating those recommendations to the school districts across Ohio, the governor said.

“But I think there is going to be a great deal of weight and authority from this group,” DeWine added.

When asked about if the school district or the state should be the authority to carry out future changes DeWine said that decision will come after the recommendations.

“There are several things that can be done,” DeWine said. “One, you can leave it up schools, or two, the state can mandate it. If the state mandates it then you have to get into the question of paying for it.”

While school bus inspection was at the focus of DeWine’s visit to Mentor, the lack of drivers for those buses was also brought into question.

Bus driver groups nationwide have brought up pay disparity as being part of the reason why drivers are hard to find. DeWine said the drivers will also be part of the focus of the task force.