With the start of another school year just weeks away, the Butler Area School District will be able to utilize a new tool to ensure student safety.
The district’s busing contractor, Valley Lines, has installed new surveillance cameras on each of its buses. The new system will be able to capture both audio and video recordings of inside the bus and what the driver is seeing on the road.
Ben Clepper, president of Valley Lines, said the company spent between $150,000 and $200,000 for the new surveillance system. Clepper says last year, only about 10 percent of buses running routes for Butler had cameras and those were of fairly low quality.
Valley Lines plans to continue to work closely with the district’s Transportation Department to take advantage of improvements in information sharing technology, like software that would be able to send video directly to the district at any given time.
The first day of school for students in the Butler Area School District is Aug. 30.
