FAIRFIELD, Conn. — An incident last week in which uninsured and unregistered tour buses transported 250 Fairfield Public Schools students for a field trip to Washington, D.C., has officials reviewing the district’s policies.
Last Wednesday, John Ficke, the district’s supervisor of transportation, was outside one of its elementary schools to make sure the buses showed up for the field trip and was surprised to find that they weren’t from the company that the district normally uses for long trips, the Connecticut Post reports.
Ficke took a cell phone picture of the license plate on one of the buses and wrote down the plate numbers for the other four buses. After sending the information to the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, he found out that the registration for the buses had lapsed March 31 and that the insurance had also been canceled.
Bill Seymour, a spokesman for the Department of Motor Vehicles, told the Connecticut Post that his agency contacted the bus company, police and the District of Columbia Park Service, which pulled the buses off the road just outside Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. They then notified Fairfield Public Schools, which got replacement buses for the trip.
Several future school trips booked with the uninsured company have been canceled. Also, Ficke told the news source that schools will still be able to use travel agents to book field trips, but the district will need to be notified of the carrier, and registration and insurance coverage checks will be made even when school officials are familiar with the company.