New, Safer School Buses Rolling Out in Caddo Parish this Month
As kids in Caddo Parish are preparing to kiss their schools goodbye for 2019, Caddo Parish is getting ready to kiss their old bus fleet goodbye forever. This month, new and safer buses will start replacing the aging vehicles currently serving as transport for roughly 22,000 children that rely on them every school day.
4 new, state of the art buses have already started ferrying students to and from various schools across the area served by the Caddo Public School System. This is the first of 250 planned to replace older vehicles (some as old as 25 years) that have just outlived their prime over the next decade.
The new, $97,000 vehicles are bigger by far - they carry 77 kids compared to the 65-70 person capacity of their predecessors. They are also equipped with front and rear air-conditioning, and have more cameras in them than an episode of Big Brother. By the way, each of these cameras, which will automatically record every moment of every commute, cost $2,000.
According to KSLA, Caddo Parish administrators plan to have 25 brand new buses on in the fleet by the end of the month. The cost of the entire bus replacement program is $25 million. No word on seat-belts.