Concerns grow after school bus fixed with duct tape in Ft. Bend ISD
FORT BEND COUNTY, Texas (KTRK) -- You place your children on school buses expecting them to be safe.
But after someone secured an emergency exit window with duct tape and a paper clip, parents grew very concerned.
Fort Bend ISD says it is investigating the incident. A district spokesperson will not say who is to blame, only that "actions have been taken" with appropriate personnel.
More than two weeks ago, pictures began circulating among parents of children at Dulles Middle School.
In the images you could see what appeared to be an interior of a school bus, with duct tape over a latch on one emergency exit window.
"If this happened to that one bus, how many other buses are like this?" asked concerned parent Sharon Leal. "There was also a paper clip inserted into the latch of the window."
She worries if her son and other students could not have exited the window, had there been an emergency. "This was taped up in a way to where you could not do that. You would not be able to open it," she said.
Leal says her son told her the window had been loose on the same bus last year and when they'd drive over a bump, an alarm would sound.
It's not clear who might have decided a paper clip and duct tape were the solution, or when they did it.
Fort Bend ISD says it immediately took the bus out of service upon receiving a report on the taped window latch September 14th.
"Clearly that's not the way a repair is to be made," said FBISD spokesperson Amanda Bubela.
She says the district has gone back and checked each of its 513 buses. They found no other duct tape in use in any similar repair.
Bubela would not say if anyone has been reprimanded for the repair work, only that this was not an "acceptable practice" and that this is seen by the district as a "learning opportunity."
