MESA, Ariz., – As the school year hits a midway point, a recent Verra Mobility 2025-2026 school year survey, issued via Pollfish, reveals that parents and caregivers of school-aged students overwhelmingly support the use of automated enforcement to improve student transportation safety.
The survey, which included 2,000 parents or caretakers of children who walk, drive, are driven, or take transportation to school, showed that many respondents have witnessed near-miss incidents where a student was almost hit in a school zone or near a school bus.
The data points to a pattern of dangerous incidents in school zones and near school buses, and parents’ desire for action:
82% support safety cameras to monitor and penalize drivers who illegally pass stopped school buses. 70% of respondents favor automated enforcement in school zones
The response comes as many of these same parents and caregivers have witnessed events that nearly led to student tragedy:
43% have observed a “near miss” in a school zone. 33% have seen a “near miss” surrounding a stopped school bus
Automated enforcement programs have long been proven effective. Verra Mobility program data shows that school bus stop-arm programs have experienced as much as a 50% reduction in violations within just two months of launching the program. As the program continues, 98% of drivers who receive one stop-arm violation don’t receive a second.
Similar success has been experienced with school zone speed safety programs, where programs have experienced a 94 percent reduction in speeding at speed camera locations.
“Parents, educators, and communities share the same priority – keeping students safe,” said David Dorfman, senior vice president, Verra Mobility. “With a large majority of parents supporting automated enforcement in school zones and for school bus stop-arm enforcement, technology offers a proven way to change dangerous driving behaviors and prevent tragedies.”
This data comes as cities and counties across the U.S. are utilizing technology to make a difference. During the 2024-2025 school year, Verra Mobility, which covers more than 250 communities, launched 13 new school zone speed programs, from Memphis, TN, to Poulsbo, WA, in order to deter dangerous driving and protect students.
This trend also reflects concerns from educators and school administrators, with 38% of public-school officials moderately or strongly agreeing that traffic patterns around their schools pose a threat to students’ physical safety during their commute. To combat this, parents are advocating for a holistic safety approach with physical and policy-based improvements such as speed bumps, more crossing guards, better signage and traffic signals.
For more information on how to support safer driving and how to employ safety solutions for your community, visit www.verramobility.com/government.
About Verra Mobility
Verra Mobility Corporation (NASDAQ: VRRM) is a leading provider of smart mobility technology solutions that make transportation safer, smarter and more connected. The company sits at the center of the mobility ecosystem, bringing together vehicles, hardware, software, data and people to enable safe, efficient solutions for customers globally. Verra Mobility’s transportation safety systems and parking management solutions protect lives, improve urban and motorway mobility and support healthier communities. The company also solves complex payment, utilization and compliance challenges for fleet owners and rental car companies. Headquartered in Arizona, Verra Mobility operates in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. For more information, please visit www.verramobility.com.
The post New survey finds 82% of parents want automated enforcement on school buses appeared first on School Transportation News.
Federal agents take a man into custody in Denver, in a photo posted to social media by the Denver field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Feb. 5, 2025. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston advised peers at a U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting to think about how to help their constituents while navigating federal pressure on immigration enforcement. (ICE)
WASHINGTON — As federal immigration enforcement agents continue to clash with protesters in cities around the country, U.S. mayors gathering in Washington, D.C., this week said they’re anxious about what might be coming next.
At a nonpartisan forum of mayors, elected officials identifying as Democrats and Republicans described an escalating situation among municipalities, their residents and the Trump administration over immigration enforcement, sanctuary policies and the threats of revoked funding for cities that don’t comply with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s deportation efforts.
Fresno, California, Mayor Jerry Dyer, a Republican and a former police chief, expressed support for President Donald Trump’s immigration policies at the border, but he said agents lack training for city operations and are being rejected by communities because of their policing tactics.
Suburban leaders from Minnesota, where agents have killed two community members and shot a third this month, echoed his sentiment. Edina, Minnesota, Mayor Jim Hovland, whose city of about 53,000 lies a few miles south of Minneapolis, said that ICE has also trickled out to suburbs and exurbs to conduct operations, spreading unease.
“We were told the actions would be precise. They were not.” said Hovland, a Democrat, speaking on a panel before a crowded room of mayors and city staffers at the winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
“Fear has not confined itself to a single household or status,” Hovland said. “Immigration enforcement without coordination does not just remove individuals … it damages communities.”
Another Minnesota mayor, Elizabeth Kautz, a Republican who represents Burnsville, said that ICE has not reduced crime during its operations and has caused mayhem for residents.
Tim Busse, a mayor from nearby Bloomington, Minnesota, described an incident in which an Hispanic off-duty police officer was pulled over by immigration enforcement agents and nearly detained until she identified her occupation.
“This is throughout the state of Minnesota and through our suburbs, including Edina and Burnsville and Bloomington, and quite simply retribution is real,” said Busse.
Trump has threatened to cut off funding beginning Feb. 1 from sanctuary cities and states that refuse to participate in immigration enforcement, which is a federal responsibility. Some mayors said they won’t let the threat deter them.
Department of Justice opens civil rights investigation into killing of Alex Pretti
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, a Democrat, told the room that his city has one of the highest concentrations of Venezuelans in the country.
Johnston said it was a moral imperative for mayors to think of their constituents, harkening to the parable of the Good Samaritan – a biblical story about a man showing kindness to an injured stranger, no matter his status.
“And that’s a question that many of us are asking a lot right now, because there’s a question of … what happens to my city?” Johnston said. “Well yes, you could lose federal funds, you could be targeted for prosecution by the Department of Justice. You could see ICE agents deployed in the streets of your city. All of those are possible.”
Several mayors said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations are disrupting construction, health care, hospitality and food sectors. Others said that ICE operations have led to reduced 911 and emergency calls as residents fear possibly being detained.
For some mayors, the battle over immigration enforcement is deeply personal. Berkeley, California, Mayor Adena Ishii, a Democrat, had Japanese-American relatives who were forcibly put in internment camps during World War II following an executive order from President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“My family was incarcerated by the United States government during World War II as U.S. citizens. We cannot repeat history,” said Ishii. “This is our opportunity to stand up and protect our people.”
Mayor Adrian Mapp was born on the island of Barbados before migrating to the United States at the tail end of the 1970s, and received his citizenship en route to being elected as a three-term mayor of Plainfield, New Jersey.
“Sometimes as politicians you can choose to take an issue, but when the issue is your life, you don’t really get the choice,” Mapp told Stateline. “We have a very large immigrant community in Plainfield and a large undocumented community that is very fearful right now. In our downtown, a number of businesses are suffering because people are afraid to be seen in public.”
Mapp said that mayors should bring in faith leaders from all denominations and members of the legal world to provide information to the community about how to respond amid federal immigration enforcement, and the threats of ICE coming to their neighborhoods.
“There is a sense that this is what the community wants from us — to know that we’re standing up,” Mapp said.
Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
About 40 people came out for a fat bike ride in Hayward, Wisconsin in memory of Alex Pretti. | Photo by Frank Zufall/Wisconsin Examiner
Over 40 riders gathered Saturday afternoon, Jan. 31, in Hayward for a “fat bike” recreational ride in the snow in memory of and solidarity with fellow biking enthusiast Alex Pretti, 37, who was shot and killed by U.S. Border Patrol agents during a federal immigration crackdown in Minneapolis on Jan. 24.
The Hayward event was just one of several in Wisconsin and hundreds held across the United States to honor Pretti, an intensive care nurse at the Veterans Administration (VA) hospital in Minneapolis.
Organizer Ian Fitch, a biking enthusiast and owner of the Whistlepunk Coffee Shop in Stone Lake, used to live near the Angry Catfish Bicycle shop in Minneapolis, the same bike shop Pretti used. Fitch said the event was inspired by the Minneapolis shop to draw the biking community together in honor of Pretti.
“This is what biking is very good at doing, bringing people together of all different types, and right now that seems like the best thing we can do for each other, to be together and to find common ground,” said Fitch.
He also said biking was a good activity to get people out, move, and process their pent-up energy.
David Schlabowske of Seeley, a former Milwaukee resident and past president of Wisconsin Bike Fed, a bicycle advocacy group, attended because it was also his way to protest how “immigration enforcement is being handled across the country and specifically in Minneapolis.”
Schlabowske said he had friends who were members of Pretti’s Riverwest 24 team, a 24-hour community race in the Riverwest neighborhood of Milwaukee. One of the bikers was a close friend of Pretti’s since college and, Schlabowske said, he is still reeling from the tragic shooting.
“He’s just hunkered down at a friend’s farm in northern Minnesota because he is still kind of too gutted,” Schlabowske said of Pretti’s friend. “Normally, he’s a big bike-advocate guy. He would go on rides, but it’s too personal.”
Schlabowske said Pretti’s friend, who wants to stay out of the media spotlight, encouraged him to do the ride in Hayward because Pretti used to bike in the area on the 100 miles of mountain and fat bike trails.
“He said, ‘Alex would have loved your doing a fat bike ride in the winter for him,’” said Schlabowski.
Many of the riders were also concerned about the violence they’ve seen on social media and television.
“It’s awful what’s happening to our country,” said Del Bakkum, a retired dentist from Spooner. Bakkum said he is concerned over the “transgression” of constitutional rights by the government and the killing by federal agents of both Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis.
”I’m here also to ride into solidarity against the overreach of government that’s happening with ICE agents taking literally, taking people off of the streets, out of their homes, and creating chaos in our country,” said Susan Bauer of Hayward. “I never thought I would ever see this kind of action of our own government, hurting and murdering our own people.”
Bauer, a nurse, said she knows of another nurse working in Hayward who was mentored by Pretti as a student.
“I’m standing in solidarity with Alex because of his actions, and because he’s a nurse and because he worked for the VA and he supported our own vets,” she said, “and he was, you know, using his own constitutional right to have an firearm (Pretti was carrying a permitted concealed pistol when federal agents tackled him, but he did not brandish it), and that’s the main reason the Second Amendment was created, was to prevent overreach of government, to let citizens protect themselves against their own government.”
Ann Pollock resides in the Hayward area in the winter to take advantage of winter sports, cross-country skiing, fat-tire biking, and then lives in the summer in Madison. She came to the ride to protest the government’s actions and honor Pretti.
Pollock said she knows of a family in the Twin Cities where the father, who has legal immigration status, was placed in a detention center for a week until, after a hearing where he proved his legal status, he was finally released.
“Why was he in detention all that time when he had his papers?” she asked. “It’s just wrong what the government is doing.”
Pollock attended the ride to show solidarity with other riders and to demonstrate that there are progressives in Wisconsin’s deep-red 7th Congressional District.
Linda Shydlowski of Cable said she had been in Minneapolis on Friday, Jan. 23 to march with her daughter in a crowd of 40,000 protesters, and while she was in the Twin Cities she dropped off food to Latino community members too afraid to come out of their houses for fear of being detained.
“We saw ICE circling around a drop-off facility in the Latino community, causing fear, and then to wake up the next morning, and you know Alex is shot. Devastating. Horrific,” she said.
Later, Shydlowski visited the memorial site constructed where Pretti had been killed.
“It was powerful to see so many people coming together in community, grieving together, those that personally knew him, those that didn’t know him at all, but we’re there in common ground, and that is for peace, for dignity of human life, and to care for each other,” she said.
While she was at the memorial, she said, she saw a man who spent over an hour on his knees crying.
She was also inspired to see two Somali women at the same site, a mother and daughter, passing out tea and a Hispanic woman offering food.
“It’s hard to know, really, what a group ride really accomplishes in light of everything going on,” said Shydlowski about the Jan. 31 bike event. “It’s such a small thing. But I think it’s powerful for people to come together and bear witness to what’s happened and ride with some hope, too, for things to get better.”
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