PORT ANGELES — The guessing game of which black box has a camera in it will soon be over for school students who take the bus.
With $23,000 from the Port Angeles School District general fund, the administration has outfitted all of the district’s 35 buses with new digital cameras.
In past years, the district rotated five video cameras among about 15 buses, and students never knew when they were being recorded.
Schools Superintendent Gary Cohn said he asked that the cameras be installed on every bus upon the request of parents, and to further the work the district was doing with Clallam County in heightening security measures after the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in April 1999.
“My focus was, let’s make these buses safer for kids and adults,” Cohn said.
Finding the unknowns
Jim Jones, executive director of business and operations for the district, said video footage from the few cameras the school district has always used has proved to be priceless when getting to the bottom of a conflict.
“It’s very rare something happens,” Jones said, but having the video footage can alleviate the unknowns of a situation.
“It takes the ‘he said, she said’ out of disciplinary responses,” Cohn said.
Although every bus is now ready to start operating the new cameras, only about five are being used on routes designated to have behavioral issues with students.
Before the district can operate all of the cameras on a daily basis, it needs to await full approval of the bus drivers’ union.