School buses to get cameras

The Vermilion Parish School Board is expected to approve the purchase of 30 small cameras that will be installed on 30 school buses.

It will cost the School Board $38,000 for the 30 cameras.

Already, there are nine school buses with cameras and 10 more cameras on order. By May, those 10 will be installed.

When school begins next year, there will be 49 school buses with cameras and about 18 without. In the next four years, those 18 will eventually have cameras.

Kurt Soileau, who is in charge of bus transportation for the school board, explained to the school board members during a committee meeting why cameras are important.

“We have had a lot of issues come up where a camera could have solved the problem,” Soileau said. “Children will say they did not do it or it was not me. The principal pulls the hard drive and all of a sudden there it is on the camera. The camera doesn’t lie. It shows what happened.”

He said on the nine buses that have cameras, it has solved many problems for principals.

The camera is placed on the roof in the front of the bus.

There was talk that if a camera is placed on a school bus, that possibly a monitor (an extra person hired by the School Board to watch the children during the drive to and from school) would no longer be needed on busses.

School Board Member Charles Campbell did not like the idea of getting rid of a monitor because of a camera.

“A monitor can stop a fight but a camera can’t,” Campbell said. “The monitors now are keeping the kids quiet on the bus. A camera can not keep the kids quiet. Once you start making noise on the bus, it leads to something else.”

Campbell said the camera does have a purpose on the bus and it is to tell the principal who started what. The monitor can’t always see every thing, he added.

In other business, the School Board is also expected to give its approval for the Kaplan Band Booster Club to build a 30 foot by 40 foot building for a concession stand which will be placed on the side of the stadium.

The concession will cost $35,000. The School Board agreed to pay for half of the building, while the Kaplan Band Booster Club will pay for the other half.