Mark McElroy, a state representative from little ol' Tillar, has the right idea. What's more, it's an idea both Democrats and Republicans can support in a display of bipartisan cooperation after all the partisan recriminations of last month's elections. Who knows, this could be the beginning of a new era of good feelings in the state's legislature--because this bill really is for the kids.
That doesn't have to be just a rationalization for spending more of the taxpayers' money. Let school districts tax themselves to pay for adding seat belts to school buses. Call it pay as you go, or rather as these safer school buses go. Let us raise a new standard that both parties can cheer.
It would be in line with the latest findings of the National Highway Traffic Administration, one of those multisyllabic federal agencies that actually does good and certainly necessary work. These federal officials, to quote state Representative McElroy, have found that seat belts do save lives. The feds, he added, "stopped short of mandating [seat belts on school buses] because of the money. When they say it's not about the money, it's about the money."
Mark McElroy learned early--at 17--about the importance of safety belts when he was hired to drive a school bus full of cheerleaders from McGehee all the way up the winding ice-covered Pig Trail to Fayetteville. Whew. It's a miracle nobody was killed or hurt. Just reading about it is enough to make heads shake even now. And palms grow sweaty. How many storm-filled nights a lot of us have endured on that drive ourselves. And it's still enough to inspire nightmares, what with rain pounding down on the windshield and the car swaying from one side of the road to the other. Not to mention the blinding lights of 18-wheelers as they come at us from nowhere with a loud whoosh and then can be seen, if at all, if in the rear-view mirror.
The price of a new school bus equipped with safety belts could run as much as $10,000 more per bus, but, tell us, how much is a child's life worth? It's priceless. Just ask their mothers and fathers, sisters or brothers. Or seventh-grader Hannah Alder, who's now completed a project on the use of seat belts on school buses. And her project has been of more than academic worth; she's turned out to be an active lobbyist for school safety. "The bus driver gets a seat belt," she complained in an interview the other day, "so he wrecks, he's safe and we're not. One day it could happen very easily."
Six kids were killed when a school bus crashed in neighboring Tennessee not long ago. It can't happen here? It's already happened here--in 2004--when a school bus out of Siloam Springs crashed, killing one student and hurting seven more. A couple of decades earlier, four students and five teachers were lost as their bus turned over in a ditch as they were trying to make a hairpin turn on Arkansas 18.
No wonder that six states now have laws that require seat belts be used on school buses. Kids who grow up using seat belts in the family car have to wonder, when they climb aboard their school bus, why none are in sight there. And they do well to wonder. Our school administrators can offer plenty of transparent excuses for their cavalier attitude about their charges' safety but no acceptable reasons.
Local school superintendents may have balked before at the expense of taking this elemental safety precaution because they feared voters wouldn't support the additional tax burden. So claims Richard Abernathy, executive director of the state's Association of Educational Administrators. This safety rule "was more or less forced on schools [before]" he adds, "and this one is much more open to the local communities." Back then, school administrators should have taken the initiative and led the drive to protect our kids. Instead they held back for no good reason. It's not too late for them to take the initiative now, following the lead of kids like Hannah Alder.
What a state and world we live in when the kids have to set the pace of reform for alleged adults. The conclusions to be drawn from all the statistical evidence for whether requiring seat belts on school buses saves lives can be argued six ways from Sunday, but plain old common sense should tell most of us that it's time to act to prevent school-bus crashes. Indeed, it's way past time to protect our kids. The feds already require smaller school buses that may carry only 10 to 20 kids to come equipped with the familiar three-point seat belts. Let's make the larger buses--and the kids that use them--just as safe. At last.
Editorial on 12/09/2016