On paper, the calculation seems simple enough: If well-trained drivers operate school buses equipped with safety devices that reduce traffic collisions, then insurance claims and premiums should likewise decrease.

In reality, insurance brokers say no single piece of technology or training technique is enough to warrant lower premiums on its own. But combined, these tools can help protect a fleet from liability in court.

“The biggest takeaway is it hopefully leads to less claims, which would ultimately drive down your cost,” said Kyle McClellan, a practice leader at NSM Insurance Brokers. “There’s not a direct correlation, like when you bundle your insurance together and you’re going to save 10 percent. But fewer claims leads to fewer dollars spent on insurance.”

While carrier insurance rates vary depending on fleet size, vehicle type, routes and loss history, rates have consistently trended upward nationwide.

Over the past year, the Consumer Price Index calculated motor vehicle insurance rising an average 6.4 percent. In one extreme case, the David School District in Oklahoma saw a 328-percent increase in insurance rates from 2020 to 2022, rising to $261,000 from $61,000 annually, per Education Week.

Rising rates often result in shopping around for better policies. When it comes to negotiating rates, McClellan said two pieces of school bus technology are particularly
attractive to providers: Cameras and telematics.

“Those allows us on the broker side to meet with school bus contractors, identify what they’re doing, how they’re doing certain things, and then go to the insurance market and tell them, here’s the reasons why you’d training fall by the wayside.

“Now they got the big screen in front of them and every time someone burps it records it, and they have to look at it instead of paying attention to what they’re doing on the road,” quipped school bus training expert Richard Fischer, who has owned Trans-Consult since 1977, after serving as a transportation and safety director in California.

Having been called as an expert witness too many times to count, Fischer said three questions often come up in court that can be addressed with training, studying driver manuals and simple record keeping: Did the driver have a duty? Did the driver previously breach this duty? What was done to correct the breach of duty?

State CDL driver manuals and the National School Transportation Specifications and Procedures manual updated by the National Congress on School Transportation don’t just lay out best practices, Fischer said. It is a driver’s job to know the manuals forward and backward.

“A driver-carrier has one duty to perform, and that’s to do everything possible to make sure that the drivers are safe to drive the bus and the kids are protected,” Fischer said.

In addition to training, he advised documenting hours and topics covered, with each driver documenting their own record in their own handwriting. A trainer writing records might implicate questions of falsified records. Most importantly though, Fischer said
don’t make excuses.

“Quit arguing the point we don’t have any money to do safety meetings or we’re short drivers, so we have to excel our training program,” Fischer said. “Everyone says we transport the most precious cargo in the world—then do it.”

Besides providing benefits on the road, many insurers favor having vehicles equipped with telematics and cameras for their benefits in court, particularly as an upward trend of high judgments increases financial risk.

Along with an increase in court-ordered “nuclear verdicts” that brokers say have resulted in increased insurance costs across the board, recent years have seen a trend of higher judgments in urban areas and lower judgments in rural areas impacting localized policy prices.

Regardless of who is at fault, Lisa Paul of Paul Consulting said juries are often poised to believe the little guy over a large company, a trend she has seen play out time and time again over a 32-year career in commercial insurance.

“Courts tend to rule against the big power unit, where people perceive there’s big dollars, whether that’s a school district or a large public company,” Paul said. “But the utilization of external facing cameras has been extremely helpful in improving the exoneration rates of accidents.”

A 2023 survey by the American Transportation Research Institute found driver-facing camera footage exonerated drivers in more cases than it provided evidence of negligence. Per legal experts surveyed, the presence of cameras seemed to drive settlements in nearly 75 percent of cases reviewed. Besides being useful in court, many commend telematics for catching both positive and negative behavior, providing opportunities for coaching and praise.

“It gives an opportunity to enhance and improve driver coaching of how the driver, the school bus operator themselves can improve their driving behavior based on how the vehicle is monitoring that during the course of transit,” Paul said.

Jeffrey Cassell, president of the School Bus Safety Company and a former director of safety for Laidlaw, credits certain camera systems, like National Express’ G-force activated DriveCam, with driving quick settlements.

“What happens is, if you’re liable, you admit to liability immediately and get to negotiating the amount and there’s no discovery. And if you’re not liable, you just get the video and send it to the plaintiff attorney,” Cassell said. “Attorneys don’t chase rainbows.”

While investing in technology and maintaining training helps avoid crashes, thus reducing insurance claims, the staunch safety advocate said keeping students safe should be motivation enough to follow best practices.

“Otherwise, it’s doing it for the wrong reason,” Cassell said. More than school bus technology and training, Cassell said loss records are ultimately the most important factor in obtaining a favorable insurance rate.

“Now if you then say to them, hang on a minute, we’ve just fitted extended stop arms, which should reduce the accidents, can we have a reduction in the premium? They’ll
say, of course you can, as soon as it shows up in your losses,” Cassell said. “If your losses go down, your premium will go down.”

Editor’s Note: As reprinted from the July 2025 issue of School Transportation News.

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A Florida man’s 16-year journey to collect a million-dollar court judgment against a school district following a life-altering school bus crash finally succeeded. Elsewhere, others aren’t as lucky.

When he was 16 years old, Marcus Button was in a car crash with a school bus, leaving him with life-altering traumatic brain injury, loss of vision, and a 16-year journey to collect a court-ordered, million-dollar judgment for damages.

On Sept. 22, 2006, Button was riding to school in the passenger seat of his friend’s Dodge Neon when a school bus took a left turn through an intersection and into the car’s path, leaving Button’s friend with little time to brake. Button struck the windshield.

“Not a week goes by that I don’t think about this case,” said Button’s attorney, J. Steele Olmstead of Tampa, Florida. “He was a hardworking young man who mowed lawns at the trailer park where he lived. He was going to grow up, learn a trade, have a wife and kids, but now he’s just a shell.”

Olmstead said Button planned to enter his family’s drywall business, but his crash-induced disabilities closed that future.

The Button family sued the Pasco County School Board of Land O’ Lakes, Florida, the following year. At trial, Button’s own expert left ambiguous the issue of whether Button had been wearing a seatbelt, prompting the jury to find him 15 percent at fault and his friend 20 percent at fault, placing the remainder of the responsibility on the school district’s shoulders.

In 2009, the jury awarded Button $1.38 million and his parents $289,396. Despite the court judgment, the school district paid out just $163,000 until this year. State law caps government liability at $200,000 for individuals and $300,000 per incident.

While government immunity shields public entities from most lawsuits, and depending on the state, can provide strict liability caps, Florida has an unusual workaround: The claims bill process.

The system dates to the 1830s, when the builder of the state’s second capital building was stiffed on his bill, prompting the territorial legislature to step in with the power of the purse to award his costs.

“The Florida Legislature has a history of trying to right wrongs when the courts can’t,” said Lance Block, who has practiced personal injury law in Florida for more than four decades.

Last year, Block helped reach a $1.2 million settlement with the Pasco County School Board that included the entity’s support on Button’s claims bill. This pact helped push the unopposed passage of Button’s claims bill this year, after the legislature had rejected at least four similar efforts. Both the House and Senate unanimously approved the measure in April.

“People do get justice from time to time, when and if they were in another state where they would be capped, there would be no other recourse,” said Block who has carried about 50 claims bills to the legislature.

Had Button’s crash occurred in another state, it is unlikely he would have found success in overriding the government immunity cap.

After Ashley Zauflik lost her leg in crash with a school bus, a Bucks County Court in Pennsylvania granted her a $14 million judgment in 2011, of which she received the $500,000 allowed under state law. The state supreme court reviewed Zauflik’s case in 2014, and a divided panel ruled the immunity cap did not violate her civil rights.

In other cases, special circumstances even heighten a public entity’s immunity. In a 2021 suit against the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Board of Education claiming a school bus had hit a parked car while delivering meals during the pandemic, the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled Gov. Roy Cooper’s declaration of a state of emergency outright barred lawsuits against the government for property damage.

Liability caps on individual cases do not protect school districts from repeated lawsuits, prompting some to outsource the risk entirely by contracting out transportation. Transportation contractors are not entitled to government immunity and take the full risk of liability head on.

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Although immunity statutes serve to protect public coffers from being drained by lawsuits, the system is not without critics who don’t think the government should be let off the hook.

The system also becomes more complicated when it comes to obtaining insurance and filing claims. Government insurance policies are as varied the U.S. topography, with some insurers covering government entities up to their liability cap and others declining to kick on until after the government has paid out the liability cap.

Some states don’t require government entities to obtain insurance at all, and others choose to self-insure through risk-management offices or use publicly funded insurance programs.

In 1992, Block in Florida represented the family of Megan Tucky, a 7-year-old child with a disability who was strangled by her restraint while riding a school bus home. In the middle of the trial, the parties settled the case for $700,000, which did not need a claims bill to be paid out, since the school district’s insurance policy covered the cost.

In Button’s case, Block said the bus that hit him was covered under a Loyd’s of London policy that declined to cover people injured in vehicles outside of the insured bus, a policy he called grossly inadequate for a school district, throwing his client’s fate into the state claims bill lottery.

“Marcus was 16 years old,” Block said. “This totally changed his life, so he’s definitely deserving of this compensation, and I wish it was for more, but this is all we were able to do.”

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Two years ago, 5-year-old A.M., a child with autism, became the victim of bullying on the school bus he rode to elementary school in the Poudre School District of Fort Collins, Colorado. The perpetrator of A.M.’s abuse was not a fellow student, but a school bus attendant the district had hired to provide students like him with extra support.

Not only was A.M., whose full name is withheld in court documents, restrained in a school bus seat throughout the months-long abuse, his disability rendered him nonverbal, leaving him unable to ask for help or tell his parents what was happening.

The school board agreed to pay out $16.2 million on May 14 to settle a lawsuit filed by parents of A.M. and other students with disabilities who were abused by Tyler Zanella while being transported to and from school during the 2022-2023 school year.

Comparatively, the settlement is about 15 percent of the district’s $10.3 million transportation services budget for this past school year.

After voting to accept the settlement, Poudre school board president Kristen Draper said she hoped the amount would help foster healing and rebuild trust.

“This resolution represents our collective commitment to addressing the harm caused and to supporting the ongoing recovery and well-being of these students and their families,” Draper said.

A.M. was not Zanella’s only victim. In all, county prosecutors say the attendant abused 10 students that school year.

The district uncovered Zanella’s criminal history and a previous child abuse conviction during a background check before he was hired in August 2022. A.M.’s parents also voiced concern about the attendant throughout the school year, but their words did not prompt change until a teacher stepped in.

When A.M. came to class with red marks on his face, a teacher asked questions, prompting the school district to review camera footage and report the abuse to police.

Related: Colorado School Bus Aid Arrested, Charged with Abusing Student

Internal bus camera footage documented Zanella swearing at A.M., calling him names, and subjecting him to physical abuse, slapping, pinching, and pushing the restrained child dozens of times over several months. According to court documents, Zanella called A.M. a f—–,” “little sh–,” and said, “if A.M. were his kid, he would be dead by now because Mr. Zanella did not have that kind of patience.”

Zanella, 36, ultimately pleaded guilty to seven counts of assault on an at-risk person, as well as harassment, and child abuse. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison in April 2024.

He also had a previous misdemeanor child abuse conviction when he applied for the  position at Poudre School District. Title 22 of the Colorado Revised Statutes lists felony child abuse as cause for termination or withholding employment.

David Lane, A.M.’s attorney, said in an email he was shocked that Zanella had been hired after school officials learned of his criminal history and that he had lied about it.

“It is utterly incomprehensible how a school district could allow a convicted child abuser to have access to utterly helpless children in this situation,” Lane wrote. “Ultimately, this governmental failure will cost the taxpayers millions of dollars and these innocent children have been severely damaged.”

Following the incident, the district spent $2 million on internal policies, which included hiring consultants at the Center for Effective School Operations, or CESO, to review the district’s policies. Among primary recommendations, CESO suggested the district develop procedures for camera footage requests and supervisor audits.

In a school board presentation on the transportation review findings last summer, Chief Operations Officer Jeff Connell reflected on how school bus driver shortages led to mechanics and supervisors driving buses, and many employees taking shortcuts.

Connell said the district was hiring an integration services transportation manager dedicated to coordinating support for students with disabilities as well as a second operations manager. Per the CESO recommendation, Connell said both managers would oversee north and south terminals to maintain a consistent culture across both locations. Connell said he hoped to cover the budget for the positions by increasing route efficiencies.

The school district previously maintained three days of video footage from each camera. Supervisors are now required to review at least one hour of footage each week, “with an emphasis on routes that have new staff and routes that serve students with special needs – particularly students who are pre- or non-verbal.”

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Moving forward, the district promised to update cameras on all school buses—a $1.9 million cost paid for with bonds. The district hired transportation service provider Zum to install four internal cameras on each school bus, including a driver-facing camera with a built-in coaching system.

“There’s a lot of hours of video to go through between ride-alongs, reviewing the video, following up on incidences and also having the driver-coaching camera, we’re going to have a lot of information available to us that we’ve never had before,” Connell said.

Draper described the incident as a painful chapter in the school district’s history but added that she hoped it would prove to be a “catalyst for important and necessary improvements.”

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