An additional safety feature will be seen on buses at various schools within the Public Schools of Robeson County this school year.
Bus camera systems have been installed on school buses for 12 schools.
Those schools are as follows: Fairgrove Elementary, Fairmont Middle, Littlefield Middle, Lumberton Jr. High, Magnolia Elementary, Orrum Middle, Parkton Elementary, Pembroke Middle, Prospect Elementary, Red Springs Middle, South Robeson Middle, and St. Pauls Middle.
Each camera system is equipped with four cameras, according to Dr. Rob Guzman, PSRC’s Transportation director.
One of the cameras records the bus driver’s front windshield view of the road.
“This will assist law enforcement in suspected cases of drivers passing a stopped bus,” said Bobby Locklear, assistant superintendent for Auxiliary Services at PSRC.
Most buses are equipped with bus cameras already, he said.
However, the identified schools were determined to have the highest need and most dated equipment, Locklear said.
“We had a limited amount of funds and we were able to cover all middle schools with the funds allocated,” Locklear said.
The cameras are paid for with money left over from the more than $1 million safety grant from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s Center for Safer Schools. The grant also allowed the district to install bus radios on all yellow school buses and activity buses within the PSRC bus fleet.
“This safety grant allowed for an increase in school transportation safety with little to no long-term expenditures needed at the district level,” Dr. Guzman said.
The new systems will allow buses to automatically upload stored video footage to the cloud as buses arrive at school. Thus, the new system provides more storage than a single SD card.
If an incident occurs on a bus or if the bus is involved in a crash, an administrator will have camera footage readily available for viewing.
“Keeping our students safe reaches well beyond the classroom,” Locklear said.
“Our top priority is keeping children safe from the time they step foot onto our buses until the time they arrive safely at home each day,” he said.
The plan is to install cameras on all buses in the future, he said.
“If the safety grant is available for the 2023-24 school year, we will apply to equip all buses with the same system,” Locklear said. “If not, then schools may use their own funding to purchase them.”