School Buses

The National Transportation Safety Board, ending its investigation of a Kentucky school bus accident in which 27 people were killed, recommended Tuesday that more than one-fifth of the nation's school buses be phased out of use. The board said the May 14, 1988, crash was clearly caused by "the alcohol-impaired condition" of a pickup truck driver who was driving the wrong way on an interstate when his vehicle collided head-on with the bus.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District on Wednesday urged the state to adopt strict emissions standards for Los Angeles' school bus fleet, saying continued exposure to diesel exhaust puts children's health at risk. The statement came a day before the California Air Resources Board is scheduled to consider a rule requiring that new school buses purchased to transport Southern California students have the cleanest-burning engines available.

When school authorities in Orange received complaints during the fall about marijuana possession and use on school buses, they called in the police. The result in recent weeks was an unprecedented series of sweeps, where gaggles of children as young as 11 were offloaded while dogs sniffed around the bus compartments. No drugs were found. No arrests were made.

City of Orange police, acting at the behest of school officials, have begun randomly searching school buses for drugs, ordering children off the vehicles and boarding them with drug-sniffing dogs. The new policy, billed as an effort to discourage students from bringing illegal substances onto school grounds, has been carried out three times since Oct. 30, most recently Wednesday afternoon at Portola Middle School.

Blythe Street children who normally make a dangerous daily trek through gang turf and across train tracks to attend class will be offered bus services thanks to an agreement announced Thursday between Los Angeles city and school officials. The bus service was provided at the repeated request of parents in the working-class neighborhood, some of whom have paid up to $28 a week to have private vans drive students to school. Beginning Dec.

Over angry protests from some parents, Saddleback Valley Unified School District trustees voted Tuesday night for a change in school bus service that will require many students to walk up to 3 1/2 miles to school or find alternative transportation this fall. A group of about a dozen irate parents whose children will be affected by the new plan brought signs to the school board meeting and confronted trustees with their safety concerns.

Thousands more California students will have to find their own way to school this fall, as districts slash bus routes to cope with budget shortfalls and high fuel costs. Critics worry that the cuts will increase traffic around schools, shift costs to parents already struggling with rising gas prices and prompt more absenteeism, hurting students' academic achievement. But paramount is the fear that the reductions will endanger students as more walk or drive to school.

A Los Angeles school bus driver was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol after getting entangled in a multi-vehicle crash on the Hollywood Freeway that injured eight and stalled traffic in the Cahuenga Pass for hours. The bus driver, Jose Guadalupe Renteria, was carrying students to El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills when his bus hit a pickup truck and then was rear-ended by an MTA commuter bus in the chain-reaction accident.

Parents wondering whether seat belts would make their children safer on school buses got an unexpected answer from a federal watchdog agency on Tuesday. Lap and shoulder belts provide no added benefit for the 23 million kids who ride the nation's school buses--and can even cause unintended harm in certain severe crashes--the National Transportation Safety Board concluded after an 18-month study.

Aging school buses continue to spew harmful diesel across the United States, a new report based on federal and state data says, and major funding is needed to address the problem. The report, released Wednesday by the Union of Concerned Scientists in Berkeley, found that the nation's 505,000 school buses were some of the oldest and dirtiest vehicles on the road.