Fatal Crash Prompts Look At Private School Buses State Keeps Few Records, Requires No Inspections Of Privately Owned Buses

When a youngster climbs aboard a bus to go to private school, he could be taking a safety risk that his public school counterparts generally do not face.

Unlike buses operated by public schools, the state keeps almost no records and requires no inspections for 405 buses owned by private schools nor the nearly 10,000 registered to churches, other organizations or private citizens.

“With a good deal of confidence, we can say a vast majority of public school buses are in good shape. We can’t say that about private school buses,” said Lt. Dave Trunkey of the Washington State Patrol. “We don’t have a good sense of how these private school buses are being maintained.”

The school bus involved in a fatal accident Dec. 7 on Washington 124 near Eureka is one example of how unsafe private-school buses can be.

The state patrol has not yet finished its report on the accident, but investigators have concluded that most of the lights on the bus from Country Haven Academy near Pasco were not on at the time of the 4:50 p.m. accident. An undetermined electrical problem caused the lights to malfunction earlier in the return trip from a choir performance in Clarkston, Trunkey said.

The driver of the bus, Country Haven Principal Ray Cornforth, was aware of the problem, according to others involved with the trip, and had decided to use the school van that was traveling in front of the bus for guidance, Trunkey said.

The accident occurred when a potato truck driver turned in front of the bus. Cornforth died from injuries sustained in the wreck, the truck driver was seriously injured and about 50 students were taken to the hospital.

Besides the electrical malfunction, the 1982 Mitsubishi bus, which had formerly been used by the U.S. Navy in the Philippines, did not have the proper number of running lights, Trunkey said.

Vehicles described on accident reports as school buses were involved in 488 collisions statewide in 1994-95, the most recent statistics available, the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin recently reported. Nearly a third included injuries and one involved a fatality, according to the Washington Traffic Safety Commission.

However, state records do not differentiate between private and public school bus accidents.

Meanwhile, there’s a void of information about how well those buses are maintained.

The state patrol inspects each of the state’s 8,100 public school buses each summer in scheduled visits. A quarter are reinspected at other times of the year during surprise checks.

“They go over every inch of the bus,” said Tom Head, transportation supervisor for Walla Walla School District.

State law allows, but doesn’t require, the state patrol to inspect privately owned buses.

The law, however, holds them to a much less stringent safety standard - that of commercial trucks - than public school buses. For instance, the brakes will only be visually inspected without a manual test, which a public school bus would receive.

Bus drivers also are not required to report or maintain safety records.

“It’s voluntary compliance,” said Roger Kraft of the U.S. Highway Administration’s office in Olympia.

By comparison, Oregon holds most public and private buses to the same safety standards and requires annual inspections on both, and that proof of inspection be sent to the state, said Al Shannon, director of pupil transportation for the Oregon Department of Education.

The owners of fewer than 100 privately owned buses requested state patrol inspections in each of the past two years, said Craig Powell, WSP program manager for public school bus inspections.

Of 47 inspections done this year, 15 of the buses, or about 32 percent, were put out of service for safety or mechanical defects, the Union-Bulletin reported. Thirty-two, or 36 percent, of the 89 buses inspected in 1995 were put out of service, the newspaper said.

The state patrol found a much higher rate of defects, nearly 50 percent, when it performed a one-time, random inspection of about 270 privately owned buses in 1994, the Union-Bulletin reported.