City Council gets on board with cameras on school buses

By AUBREY HAWKE
Waltham Times Contributing Writer

A week after a van crashed into a Waltham school bus, sending six children to the hospital for minor injuries, the City Council on Jan. 27 took action to make school buses safer. 

The council voted to move forward with a plan that would put cameras on public school buses, believing the cameras could catch and ticket people who swerve around or fail to stop for school buses. 

Ward 9 Councilor Robert G. Logan drafted the resolution, which would have Waltham adopt state legislation enacted just weeks ago. 

On Jan. 10 Gov. Maura Healey signed the Act Concerning the Safety of School Children Embarking and Disembarking School Buses, allowing cities to install cameras on public school buses. The act specifies that the cameras “shall be used solely to monitor and detect violations of motor vehicle operators who overtake or fail to stop for a school bus.”

The City Council took the first step to adopt the act, deciding at its Jan. 27 meeting to send it to its Ordinances and Rules Committee for further review. 

Several councilors signed on in support of the resolution, and two spoke about it at the meeting.

“This would require the School Committee to be onboard. It’s a ‘local option act,’ so that means that it’s been passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor, but in order for it to take effect in Waltham, we have to vote to adopt it,” Logan said at the Monday night meeting. 

Logan addressed potential concerns about the surveillance, saying “there are some safeguards.” Logan said that school buses would have signs on them showing that a camera is in use. In addition to signage, there are regulations on how and when recorded materials can be used. 

Additionally, the state act which Waltham looks to adopt orders that all photos and videos from the camera be destroyed after 30 days unless there is an identified violation in them. If they do contain an identified violation, they must be destroyed a year after last judicial use. 

Logan said this resolution is an important step to protecting kids, particularly since “their brains aren’t fully developed, they’re almost expected to act impulsively. That’s natural behavior for kids. They get off a school bus and maybe they dart out, and maybe somebody has pulled around and now you have a tragedy.”

Logan said the violations that come out of this surveillance would result in fines and would not count as moving violations. He told The Times that any tickets issued would go to the owner of the vehicle in question, regardless of who was driving, and that tickets would not raise motor vehicle insurance. 

Ward 8 Councilor Cathyann Harris said at the meeting that she hopes these cameras will serve as a deterrent for drivers breaking laws around school buses.

The resolution has now been sent to the Ordinances and Rules Committee for further discussion. After the Ordinances and Rules Committee concludes its work, the resolution will go before the City Council again for a final vote, Logan explained. 

Then, if passed, the order would allow the city’s School Department to put cameras on its school buses but would not mandate it to do so, Logan said.