HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — The warnings are ending, and tickets will soon be issued for drivers who illegally pass school buses in Hillsborough County.
Ashley Ely found her fit behind the wheel of a school bus.
“Honestly, I love working with kids, and I didn’t really want to be in the classroom, so this is next best thing,” said Ely, who has been a school bus driver for 16 years.
She shepherds children to and from school in Hillsborough County for three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon.
Yet, time and again, Ely sees other drivers jeopardizing her students.
“The first thing in my mind is oh no, like I don’t want them hitting the bus because there’s kids on here,” said Ely. “I don’t want them hitting a student.”
Hillsborough County Schools shared a video on Wednesday showing drivers not stopping when a bus’s stop sign was out and flashing with kids walking nearby.
The district has partnered with BusPatrol,equipping all its school buses with cameras that capture the license plates of cars that illegally pass stopped buses and video the violation. At the beginning of the school year, the district launched a 30-day warning period.
That warning period is ending, and starting Thursday, September 12, drivers who pass school buses with the stop arm extended will receive a ticket.
“We’d rather there not be any tickets, and kids are safe,” said Chris Farkas, Hillsborough County Schools Deputy Superintendent.
Farkas said that over the last four weeks, they have sent out over 10,000 warnings, which is concerning since they have almost 80,000 kids riding the bus each way every day.
“We’re hoping that now that the warning period is over, that number drops drastically, but sometimes it does take that message,” said Farkas. “Sometimes it does take that ticket for some people to pay a little bit more attention to what had happened.”
This image breaks down exactly when you need to stop for a bus.
The district points out that in Florida, it’s illegal to pass a school bus that’s stopped with its red lights flashing and stop arm out. The tickets will cost you $225.
“It’s like an extra eye for us because before the cameras were installed, we couldn’t really do anything about it,” said Ely. “We could complain about it, but nothing was really going to happen.”
The cameras are a game changer for bus drivers hoping to hold people accountable.
“If the lights are flashing, don’t go passing,” said Ely.
Investigative Reporter Katie LaGrone obtained the most recent batch of Florida teacher exit interviews which detail, in their own words, why teachers left the classroom this summer.
