As state lawmakers gear up for the 2024 legislative session, it’s incumbent upon representatives from Seattle to hold the cost to tweak state legislation to maintain youngsters secure whereas driving the varsity bus.
Proper now, odds are in drivers’ favor; in the event that they blow previous a college bus with its cease paddle prolonged whereas youngsters are boarding or exiting the bus, nothing will occur to them. That’s as a result of between the Seattle College District, the Seattle Police Division and the Seattle Prosecutor’s Workplace, site visitors security involving faculty buses has slid down the precedence listing.
For years, SPS and the King County Prosecutor’s Workplace labored beneath a contract to verify violators paid a hefty effective for ignoring a bus’s cease paddle. At $500 per ticket, the thought was to make such violations a onetime offense. Whereas most motorists paid what they owed, SPS didn’t pay what it owed the prosecutor’s workplace, in order that relationship ended.
The district started talks with town’s prosecutor earlier this yr, however now that workplace says it doesn’t have the personnel to tackle the accountability. Identical for the Seattle Police Division, which has been understaffed for a couple of years.
Now the issue is who can and can evaluation tickets generated by footage collected from bus-mounted cameras — a job, in keeping with state legislation, that have to be achieved by legislation enforcement.
Senate Democrats instructed The Seattle Occasions editorial board that reasonably priced housing and schooling will likely be amongst its priorities for the upcoming session. Scholar security must be on that listing as properly, even when any potential change — comparable to permitting for specifically educated civilians to evaluation tickets — could be narrowly tailor-made to use solely to Seattle. Mayor Bruce Harrell’s workplace stated town will proceed to increase using cameras for site visitors enforcement, already underway in 19 faculty zones. That, coupled with a legislative answer, would assist lower the variety of violations.
Whereas Seattle’s delegation in Olympia is determining learn how to finesse this, SPS and town’s prosecutor’s workplace should collaborate as properly whereas acknowledging monetary restraints. That is what’s meant by doing the exhausting work.
Although a whole lot of motorists every year sadly and boldly ignore our youngsters’s security, we don’t anticipate elected and appointed leaders to do the identical.
