Excerpted from from Dr. Vacca's
January 2016 Education Law Newsletter.
Overview
In the recent past several disconcerting incidents involving school buses have been reported in the news. While some reports involve highway accidents, others involve situations where automobile drivers have passed school buses stopped with their caution lights flashing. Others involve children disembarking at the bus stop being hit by passing cars and still others involve violent student behavior while the school bus is traveling down the road. While in some jurisdictions such incidents have prompted state legislatures to relook at existing statutes covering traffic laws and school buses, others have caused local school districts to mount surveillance cameras both in and on school buses.
Bus Safety. Student safety is, always has been, and will continue to be a major topic of concern in communities across this nation. Of all the areas of local public school system operation where safety is a constant focus, school system transportation, especially the school bus, is at the top of the list.
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Analysis to Apply in Search of Fault. What constitutes adequate care for students is fact based—that is, it depends on the circumstances in a given situation. To put this another way, what constitutes adequate care in one situation might not be so in another. However, one thing is certain. While student safety cannot be guaranteed, and situations differ in fact, there is no room for
negligence in any situation involving students and a potential for injury. Thus, negligence becomes the focus of the analysis—i.e., the search for fault.
As a general rule, to establish school district or employee liability where student injury occurred, the facts must show that the school officials, or employees (e.g., administrator, teacher, coach, bus driver) had a duty to keep students from harm, or either created, or had knowledge of, an existing dangerous condition but did not take reasonable steps to remedy the condition. Moreover, the breach of duty owed, or prior knowledge and failure to avoid or correct the existing condition was subsequently the
proximate cause of student injury.
Russo v. Valley Central School District (N.Y.A.D.2 Dept. 2006)
In more recent cases the element of
deliberate indifference often is applied to the analysis.
Deliberate indifference has been defined as a situation in which the facts establish that school officials or employees had
direct (actual, sufficiently specific) knowledge of the potential for serious harm to students, failed to take reasonable steps to remedy the condition, and this deliberate indifference subsequently was the
proximate cause of student injury. As one court succinctly phrased it, deliberate indifference exists where school officials knew or were “willfully blind” to what was going on and failed to take reasonable and necessary steps to remedy the situation.
Harry A. v. Duncan (D. Mont. 2005)
Another element of analysis to apply in determining whether negligence exists involves
foreseeability. While it would be unrealistic to believe that school officials and employees can be held responsible for every mishap that occurs on school property during the school day,
foreseeability dictates that school officials or employees (administrator, teacher, coach, bus driver—working directly with and responsible for students) are expected to take
reasonable care to avoid acts of commission, or omission, and/or harmful conditions that he or she can
reasonably foresee would likely cause injury to students. (Vacca and Bosher, 2012)
Recently, while searching for new case law to add to the revised ninth edition of our text, I came across a comprehensive and instructive decision from the New York Court of Appeals—one that reads like a restatement of tort law regarding public school buses.
Williams v. Weatherstone (N.Y. 2014)
Facts. At the time of her injury (March 13, 2008) . . . .
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Policy Implications
While the applicability of the New York Court of Appeals decision is limited to New York State, and emphasizing that incidents involving public school system buses are fact based and for analysis must be placed within the context of state law (both traffic law and public school law), the Court’s rationale is nonetheless instructive. Williams v. Weatherstone (2014) reads like a restatement of the law on tort liability as applied to public school busing. What follows are generalized suggestions for local school board policy gleaned from that decision:
School board policies must make it clear that:
- The school system, with cooperation and involvement of appropriate local municipal governmental agencies, plans for and locates school bus stops in safe locations nearest to the homes where students reside; and, regularly monitors the conditions of designated school bus stops in an effort to maintain student safety.
- Where unsafe and or dangerous conditions might develop at school bus stops the Board seeks the cooperation and involvement of parents and appropriate local governmental agencies to remedy the existing conditions.
- The Board requires that school bus drivers follow all traffic laws and implement all school board policies and procedures applicable to school bus operation and student safety; that drivers take steps to maintain student safety while the bus is in transit; and that drivers properly instruct students on safety precautions to take while boarding and disembarking from the school bus.
- The school system seeks the cooperation and involvement of parents in maintaining student safety: (1) at school bus stops; (2) while children are boarding and disembarking at school bus stops; and (3) as children transition from the school bus stop to home.
To read the full brief, visit
our website.