Michigan School Buses Fail Safety Audit, Drivers Inexperienced

One of the most nerve-wracking times for a parent is having to watch their child get on a bus, in a van, or in a vehicle with another adult being responsible for their safety. As we know, there are thousands of car accidents that happen every year and some of them involve school buses. Parents and school districts trust these drivers with the lives of hundreds of thousands of students every day which is a huge responsibility.

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In Michigan, the state's Department of Education and Michigan State Police is responsible for making sure that the buses pass their safety inspections and that all drivers are properly and legally trained to be operating the vehicles. They currently use about 13,000 buses to transport over 800,000 students to and from school each day. Unfortunately, Auditor General Doug Ringler identified problems with the buses and drivers' qualifications.

School Buses and Drivers Fail Safety Audit in Michigan

These are the things that Auditor General Ringler found while investigating the school buses and drivers in Michigan:

• 69% of sampled school bus drivers lacked documentation showing they met all required qualifications, which includes periodic training, as well as appropriate licensing.
• Of the 1,936 active school bus drivers employed in Michigan between 2020 and 2023, 123, or 6%, did not possess the required license type and likely transported pupils.
• Of bus drivers sampled, 35% had not completed all required periodic training.
• The auditor identified 10 bus drivers with violations requiring them to retake and pass a commercial driver's license test, but school districts could not show that eight of those 10 drivers had done so.
• The auditor found 15 bus drivers with felony convictions that had not been reported at the time they were hired.
• For the 17 training facilities, 11 had not had their three-year compliance reviews completed on time, as required.
• The Michigan Department of Education failed to monitor school districts' pre-trip school bus inspections and more than 80% of the documentation of those required inspections sampled by the auditor general were found to be deficient.
• Required annual inspections of school buses by Michigan State Police in many cases did not happen every 365 days and safety deficiencies increased as that time frame was exceeded.
• The MSP's bus inspection procedures did not require inspectors to document the scope of procedures conducted, certify a review of all required school bus equipment and consistently record violations that were fixed during the inspection.
• The red stickers the MSP uses to flag unsafe buses excluded language, required by law, that clearly indicated the vehicle could not be driven.

The Michigan Department of Education says that they agree with the findings and recommendations of the auditor and will be working to implement those changes immediately. This is something they take very seriously as student safety is vitally important.