In Manassas, student transportation is a daily operation that touches nearly every corner of the community. Each morning and afternoon, more than 6,500 students rely on the school bus to get to and from school safely.
For Andy Hawkins, Executive Director of Finance and Operations at Manassas City Public Schools, that responsibility is personal. And over time, it became clear something wasn’t working: drivers were passing stopped school buses, families were speaking up, and bus drivers were raising concerns.
The risk wasn’t hypothetical. It was happening on their routes, in their neighborhoods, in real time. So the district decided to act.
The Problem: Drivers Illegally Passing Stopped School Buses Throughout Virginia
Before taking action, Manassas needed to understand the full scope of what was happening on and around their buses. A stop-arm camera pilot program made the problem visible, and the results were hard to ignore:
- An average of 11 stop-arm violations per day
- Each bus passed 35 times per year on average
- More than 2,450 illegal passings annually across the district
With clear data in hand, the district was able to bring the conversation to the broader community. City council, law enforcement, and local stakeholders could now see the same thing the district was seeing: students were being put at risk during the most vulnerable moments of their day.
The Solution: Modernizing the School Bus with Advanced Safety Technology
Manassas chose to move forward with a full-fleet stop-arm safety program, equipping every school bus with connected safety technology, including interior, rear-facing, and stop-arm cameras.
Speaking about the decision, Hawkins explained:
“BusPatrol offered everything. They offered cameras on all our school buses, not just select buses, and not only for writing citations. They installed cameras on the inside of the bus, on the back of the bus, on the right-hand side of the bus.”
For law enforcement, that level of coverage changes what’s possible. Traffic Services Officer MPO. B. Mangione shared:
“The main challenge for law enforcement is manpower. You have so many school buses out at any one given time that you can’t have somebody watching each bus. Whereas when every bus has a camera on it, it’s much easier to identify the violators.”
How much did the school district pay for the technology? Zero.
For many school districts, one of the biggest barriers to implementing new safety solutions is cost. In Manassas, that wasn’t a factor. The program is funded through enforcement, allowing the district to move forward without any upfront investment.
That means the cost is not carried by the district, the community, or law-abiding drivers, but by those who illegally pass stopped school buses and put students at risk.
A Partnership Dedicated to Student Safety
Technology is only one part of the equation. From installation to ongoing support, BusPatrol works alongside Manassas City Public Schools to help the program run smoothly and respond to what’s happening on the ground.
Hawkins on that working relationship:
“Whenever I call BusPatrol, whenever I need them, they’re there. They will always do anything to help me with any problem that I have. For example, if we have an incident on the school bus and I need to have camera footage downloaded, they hop on it. If I need support with program statistics, my account manager will pull it together within an hour and help me. If I need to know which streets within our city have the most incidences, where the biggest issues are, they can tell me in a few minutes. Or if we have a problem with the money or with the police, they will come and meet face-to-face to figure the problem out. BusPatrol has done everything they told me that they were going to do. They told me that they were going to be partners with Manassas City, and they certainly have been.”
The local police department echoed these sentiments, saying:
“BusPatrol is very supportive. They make it very smooth and seamless for us to do our portion of the program. Even from the court follow up, they provide us with all the documentation, videos, and everything that we need to present evidence in the court.”
Using data to make informed decisions
One of the most immediate shifts for the district was access to consistent, reliable data. With every bus equipped, transportation leaders could see when and where violations were happening and share that information with law enforcement.
That visibility helped the police department focus attention on high-risk areas and take targeted action. In response to BusPatrol data, the department introduced educational signage in areas with the highest number of violations to reinforce safe driving behavior.
Traffic Services Officer MPO. B. Mangione explained:
“The BusPatrol program helped us to identify two main violations areas. We created large signs for these danger zones, to remind drivers that they need to stop for school buses that are stopped in either direction. It’s about continually educating the public so that they’re aware that you need to stop for the bus on the other side of the street. We believe this has been effective in reducing the number of stop-arm violations.”
Has the program been effective?
The impact became clear quickly, both in the data and in what the district was hearing. In the first year, 1,803 citations were issued. In the second year, that number dropped by 35% to 1,165.
Since the program was introduced, the district has seen a noticeable drop in complaints related to school bus safety. Hawkins said:
“Bus drivers are very happy. They’re ecstatic about it because they were complaining that a child was going to get hurt for years. We used to receive complaints all the time from parents talking about how dangerous it was for their children to get off the school bus. We haven’t received any of those complaints in years.”
As Public Information Officer Sergeant A.G. (Gio) Barahona mentions:
“When it comes to safety, the safety of our children and the safety of our communities, that is all of our responsibility.”