A Nevada Highway Patrol program that ensures the buses students ride to and from school are safe was found to have inadequate resources to inspect all vehicles, its semi-annual inspection reportedly overlooking more than 100 transportation methods that don’t fit the traditional definition of a bus.
The Nevada Legislative Council Bureau conducted an audit of the NHP division of the Department of Public Safety and discovered that not all requirements were being followed, specifically the fact that 155 non-bus vehicles went unexamined.
These vehicles routinely take students to school and school-related activities throughout Nevada.
The Silver State has roughly 2,500 regular-use school buses that are checked by the NHP, and issues such as broken mirrors, defective brakes and loose seats can curb a bus from rotation.
Due to these findings, the NHP said it is reconsidering its polices by expanding the program’s scope, while also looking to hire more employees to handle the workload in order to rectify this oversight.
“The Department of Education agrees with the audit and will be working the NHP to develop guidelines for inspecting vehicles other than school buses to facilitate this finding,” said Diana Hollander, director of pupil transportation for the Nevada Department of Education.
