School District 47 is stepping up video surveillance of the students riding its school buses.
School district transportation supervisor Matthew Hull notified parents in an email Sunday, March 26, that the district had begun the process of installing cameras inside each bus.
“We decided to look into the use of cameras on buses at the request of parents and drivers,” said Hull. “Most districts have now moved to having the digital cameras on board.”
The cameras will help combat vandalism and bullying on the buses, said Hull. A recent transportation funding announcement from the province allowed the district to undertake the fleet-wide project, he added.
Five of the school district’s buses have been outfitted with a video system that records images and audio to a secured hard drive on each bus. The rest of district’s buses will be outfitted with the system over the summer. Cameras for all buses will cost approximately $20,000.
Each bus has three cameras, two mounted at the front facing back and one at the rear facing forward.
This is not the first time the school district has placed cameras inside buses. Approximately 20 years ago, it installed tape-based video surveillance systems, but they required daily maintenance and the tapes did not last very long, said Hull. The new system records up to 30 days before overwriting older files.
Powell River Board of Education had previously instituted a policy for use of video surveillance in buses that addresses student privacy and who has access to the footage. Hull said the policy is available on the board’s website for the public to read.
Parents of students who use the bus will be reminded each year of the surveillance and stickers have been placed inside buses notifying riders they are being recorded.
“A lot of this is to just to establish the reality of what actually happened during an incident,” said Hull, adding that bus drivers do not have access to the footage.
James Thomson Elementary School representative to the district parent advisory committee (DPAC) Siona Rounis said while there has not been any discussions around bus cameras among the DPAC, she expects the issue to be raised. But as a parent who sends her daughter on the bus, she said does not take issue with the cameras.
“Like a car dash cam, you may never need it, but that one time it’s needed you have it and it’ll protect everybody,” she said. “This isn’t an invasive or a big thing. It’s just a natural progression with us modernizing the buses.”
