Thursday, July 17, 2014

How Can We Best Provide Safety to BISD Student Bus Riders? Part I

Photo by Miguel Roberts, Brownsville Herald
Two BISD bus fires within a week in October 2013 threatened the lives of 59 students, not to mention 2 drivers, firefighters and onlookers.  

 BISD Superintendent Carl Montoya has never commented on the cause or causes of the fires, any action taken to prevent recurrence and protect the students.  He never will.

BISD Trustee Cata Presas-Garcia hinted that the problem may be tied to the manufacturer of the buses:

"We have to face the battles, but we overcame that. We all understood it was Thomas buses and Thomas buses were purchased. So International buses were not purchased this time around. We want whats best for our students and safety is priority for our district."

Actually, the majority of BISD buses continue to be International, Navistar.  Even many of the buses with Bluebird or Thomas bodies continue to have International chassis, which includes engine, transmission, the so-called drive train, as well as wheels, braking, axles, etc.

International Corporation eventually sent their own investigative team to determine the cause of the fires. BISD hired Dynamic Technical Consultants, Inc., a 4 person company from Raleigh, NC.  

After some wrangling, chronicled on this blog, BISD released to us the 19 page report from DTC.

Brownsville Metro Board
Chairman, Daniel Lenz
We've shared our copy of the report with world class bus and transportation expert Daniel Lenz, chairman of the Brownsville Metro Advisory Board.

In our next report we will share Lenz's observations about what the report includes and omits, what it all means for the future safety of BISD students.


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3 comments:

  1. AnonymousJuly 17, 2014 at 10:00 AM

    Medical and nervous breakdowns on the border: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/07/exclusive-feds-struggling-to-cope-with-medical-breakdown-at-the-border/

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJuly 17, 2014 at 7:06 PM

    To the best of my understanding, no students have been hurt in these bus fires. Why should you be worried about the threat to students of bus fires, yet you seem to care little about the life-long damage to our students from the poor academic standards in BISD. Let's put our priorities in the right place....BISD is a daily threat to the lives and well-being of students because of poor academics. Ignorance and illiteracy are a much greater threat to our students than a bus fire.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJuly 17, 2014 at 7:07 PM

    If you want to fix something, why not promote fixing our piss poor education system in BISD.

    ReplyDelete

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