DeWine provides update on school bus safety task force ahead of the new year

WHIO Staff
·2 min read

December 27 marks four months since family and friends began saying their final goodbyes to Aiden Clark.

The Northwestern Schools student was killed when a driver crossed the center line a crashed into his school bus on the first day of school.

News Center 7′s Xavier Hershovitz spoke one-on-one with Governor Mike DeWine about the crash and the work he’s done since then to make school buses safer.

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“I have eight children. We lost a daughter who was killed in an auto accident,” DeWine said. “Our daughter Becky, so it’s something that, you know, certainly touches us.”

For months, leaders have been meeting to form recommendations on ways to make school buses safer.

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“When you put your child or your grandchild on a bus in the morning, it is still the safest way to get that child to school, safer than putting them in a car,” DeWine said. “It’s safer than any other way, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make it safer, and this is what I’ve charged this group to do.”

Their recommendations are due to the governor in the new year, and even before seeing them, it’s a priority for DeWine.

“We’re going to do everything we can to implement those recommendations,” DeWine said.

DeWine wants to work with the legislature to make sure the state picks up any of the costs.

“If there’s extra things that would need to be on that school bus. This is something that the state should pay for, and we shouldn’t have schools in a situation where they buy a bus and they say, ‘Well, we can’t afford the extra $10,000 or $15,000 at cost to do ABC,’ so that that would be my goal, and we hope to work with the legislature to do that,” DeWine said.

School bus safety is something DeWine has been working on since he was a senator.

“We’re going to continue to focus on this and we’ll have something to announce to the public after the first of the year,” DeWine said.