Megan Navarro
DRIPPING SPRINGS — All of the buses in Dripping Springs ISD’s fleet are equipped with three-point seat belts, keeping the district in compliance with new state legislation, according to a presentation at the April 27 board of trustees meeting.
Senate Bill 546 was passed during the 89th Texas Legislature as a way to strengthen safety standards for student transportation, amending the Texas Transportation Code to add a subsection that establishes a mandate for three-point seat belts on school buses.
The bill requires that every school bus operated or contracted by a school district must be equipped with three-point seat belts for every passenger and the driver.
Prior to now, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) started addressing safety on school buses. While it did not mandate or recommend seat belts at the time, the NHTSA looked at rollover protection, body joining strength, seating — making it softer with higher backs — and compartmentalizing, which was found to be effective for a long time for front- or rear-end collisions, explained DSISD chief operations officer Scott Berry.
Some states began to require lap belts on buses and then, in the 1990s and 2000s, there was a lot of research conducted for manufacturers to test three-point seat belts. Senate Bill 693 was passed in Texas in 2017, requiring any bus that was a 2018 model or later to have a three-point seat belt — with some exemptions.
“They did allow some ways to get out of that and one of the ones that a lot of districts use was to bypass that based on the budget,” Berry said. “In other words, it was just too expensive to do it. Our district chose not to do that, which is great. They prioritized safety on that.”
There was also not a mandate to retrofit any of the buses that were 2018 or older.
This has now led to the last legislative session, which passed SB 546 and became effective Sept. 1, 2025, with an expected full compliance by Sept. 1, 2029. While there were some exemptions for school districts in the 2017 legislation, almost all of them have been removed for SB 546, Berry presented.
“I think the only one left is that if it voids the warranty of the bus, you don’t have to do that, but that’s very rare,” he said.
As a component of the bill, there is a reporting requirement due May 29 — which DSISD has already submitted — that tracks compliance and any financial challenges, as well as needing to present to the school board.
Looking at DSISD’s fleet inventory of 91 buses, which includes buses from 2012 through new ones in 2027, all of them are equipped with three-point seatbelts, according to Berry.
“This was really good foresight to put this in our bond. It allowed us to be able to pay for that … As far as the retrofit goes, there were 37 total buses that were retrofitted. We're complete with that project now and it cost [$1,238,886.56]; I believe it came out to a little over $30,000 per school bus to do that,” he said. “And then, as we replaced buses, and even as we've grown both replacement and our growth buses, we were purchasing three-point seat belts.”
Berry continued that between the 2023 and 2025 bonds, the district purchased 15 new school buses for a grand total of $4,405,885.56. The cost of a bus with three-point seat belts versus not is approximately $7,000 to $10,000 per bus.
“This is just the wow factor to me, that we are so ahead of the deadline. [We] didn't have to do it immediately, [but] safety was a top priority. I just hear great things about the transportation department,” shared trustee Kim Cousins. “We've got another couple of years left to go and y'all are just doing an amazing job and this just didn't happen overnight. I know it took a lot of work and I just want to personally thank you for that; we couldn't function the way we do without everything y'all do.”
The DSISD Board of Trustees meets next for its agenda review meeting at 2 p.m. Monday, May 11.
