School Buses

After a raucous meeting in which police expelled protesters and arrested three people amid accusations of segregation and Jim Crow, the county school board here has reversed three decades of busing designed to achieve diversity. In a contentious 5-4 vote, the Wake County school board voted late Tuesday to approve a new policy that will assign students to schools in their neighborhoods under a "community school zone" program.

Major automakers are readying a wave of plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles for consumers, but one local school district is already taking advantage of the technology. The Ventura Unified School District unveiled a $200,000, state-of-the-art, plug-in hybrid electric school bus Tuesday, the first in Southern California. The bus will start hauling students this week and replaces a polluting, 1977 model. The bus, built by the IC Bus subsidiary of Navistar Inc., is powered by a lithium ion battery pack and is expected to improve fuel economy up to 30% and reduce emissions up to 40% over a conventional gasoline-powered school bus. Michael Chiacos, transportation specialist with the Community Environmental Council in Santa Barbara, believes the bus will do even better, improving fuel economy more than 60% compared with a traditional school bus. "The bus reflects our commitment to being a green school district as we ensure safe and healthy learning environments for our students," said Trudy T. Arriaga, superintendent of Ventura Unified School District.

Nancy and Bryan Lara, ages 10 and 8, knew something was wrong when they saw a tractor surrounded by white clouds near their school bus stop in Caruthers. "I know that clouds are not on the ground, they're in the sky," Bryan said. The children hid behind a row of grapevines, but they could taste the noxious blend of liquid sulfur, gibberellic acid, insecticide and fertilizer as the rig rolled past them, billowing out its chemical cargo. Moments earlier, the mist had enveloped 17-year-old Carina at another stop about two blocks away.

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.

Suspected Islamic insurgents opened fire on a school bus, killing two Thai paramilitary rangers and wounding three teenage students. The bus was taking 10 students, ages 13 to 18, home from a school in Pattani province when an unknown number of assailants opened fire from a hiding place on the roadside. The rangers were providing security for the students. Three female students, all Buddhists, were taken to a hospital.

A rear-end collision between two school buses in Yosemite National Park on Thursday sent about 20 children to a hospital with minor to moderate injuries. The buses, both from Yellow Middle School in Newman, Calif., were traveling toward the valley floor on Big Oak Flat Road shortly before noon when one vehicle struck the rear bumper of the other a mile from California 140, a park spokeswoman said. Ambulances rushed the injured children to a Mariposa hospital where most were treated and released.

There are more than 24,000 school buses in California's fleet of belching, lung-corroding "Twinkies" (as kids call those old, yellow, rounded buses), but not one of them has ever stopped for one of my kids or any of the kids I know. We have two issues here: an aged, smog-spewing fleet of school buses, and a city that is jammed with commuters. At 3 p.m. on any weekday in L.A., a lot of those commuters are moms shuttling kids. Let's make city buses accommodate school kids.

Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters proposed rules to improve the safety of school bus seats and expand use of shoulder belts, but she declined to order seat belts for new buses. Peters said she wanted to increase the height of seat backs on all school buses from 20 inches to 24 inches. Peters also proposed that short school buses, which were more prone to rollovers, begin using shoulder straps.

Driving a school bus, a 10-year-old boy led police on a highway chase for more than 40 miles, authorities said. School officials had reported the bus stolen. Officers from three counties, four towns and the Arkansas State Police were involved in the pursuit of the bus. The driver evaded road spikes but finally slowed down enough for a deputy to force him to stop. Authorities then found that the driver was a boy. He was cuffed, arrested and later released to his parents.