FOX10 Investigates: School bus drivers and how they are monitored

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - A FOX10 News investigation is digging deeper into how the driving records of school bus drivers, and how they’re monitored.

What we found was concerning----

This all came about after a recent school bus accident.

On February 12, a Mobile County school bus flipped over into a ditch on Mason Ferry Road.

Six students and the bus driver, Angela Weaver of Lucedale, Mississippi, 47, were sent to the hospital.

Student recalls scary scene after MCPSS bus flips over

ALEA still hasn’t released the accident report for this most recent crash, so the cause of the accident is still unclear.

FOX10 News is investigating not only this crash, but Weaver’s driving record.

FOX10 News did some digging and searched for an Angela Lane Weaver in Lucedale, Mississippi.

We found three speeding tickets were issued, all more than 19 mph over the speed limit.

The first was in February of 2021.

It said Weaver was going 71 mph in a 45 mph zone.

Later that year, another ticket showed Weaver was involved in an accident.

According to the crash report, in December 2021, Weaver admitted to falling asleep behind the wheel.

It also lists MCPSS as the employer.

Another speeding ticket in 2023 said Weaver was going 74 mph in a 55 mph zone.

Just five months ago FOX10 News found a third speeding ticket, 80 mph in a 55 mph zone.

A trooper stated Weaver told the officer she was trying to get to her school bus in Wilmer.

We reached out to the Mobile County Public School System with what we found.

We received a statement late Wednesday afternoon,

To get clarity on how bus drivers are monitored, we contacted Chad Carpenter, the Director of Transportation for the Alabama State Department of Education.

“There’s nothing that we can put on a bus that makes it any safer than a well-trained, conscientious bus driver,” Carpenter said.

Carpenter says to drive a school bus in Alabama, you must have three things:

1. Commercial Driver’s License, CDL
2. Complete Entry-Level Driver Training
3. Pass a School Bus Driver Certification Class

Some things can cause you to lose your certification, like too many points on a license, due to tickets and accidents.

“If they accumulate enough points and all of this is through ALEA, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, then that CDL is no longer any good,” Carpenter explained. “If they’re issued a DUI even in their private vehicle their CDL is suspended for a year.”

We asked Carpenter how school systems find out if a driver was involved in an accident or receives a ticket off the clock...

“It’s best practice for them to come tell their immediate supervisor at their employer,” Carpenter said. “There’s nothing by law that says technically they have to do that but our school system has the ability to do what’s called an MVR a motor vehicle report request.”

Carpenter says running an MVR report should be done by school systems at least twice a year and it’s offered for free through a partnership with ALEA.

There’s also supposed to be a flagging process that notifies the state.

Carpenter says that the program hasn’t been working.

“We used to have a database basically where ALEA would send us, they would send us a report when I say us I’m talking about the Department of Education, and what we’re setting it up is where we can get notification of that,” Carpenter explained. “We used to have a system like that and we’ve realized recently that it’s not working like it should and so again I’ve been in conversations this morning with a representative from ALEA about our I.T. people working with their I.T. people to make sure the systems are talking to each other as they are.”

According to ALEA’s website, the first thing on the list that could cause someone to lose their CDL was excessive speed, going 15 mph over the posted speed limit.

Weaver remains on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation, which is standard protocol.