WARRENSBURG, Mo. — Although stunned by the death of a steering committee member, nearly 300 delegates from 48 states completed the grueling task of evaluating and approving specifications and procedures for school bus equipment and operations at the 14th National Congress for School Transportation in Warrensburg, Mo.

Dennis Hammell, the vehicle specifications coordinator for the event, died of an apparent heart attack in the early morning of May 19, the final day of the four-day meeting. Hammell worked for First Student in Lafayette, N.J. He sold his long-held family business, Village Bus, to the national contractor last year (for more information, see News Alert).

The conference, held every five years, puts under a microscope considerations in spec’ing chassis and bodies, operating school and activity buses, inspecting buses and crash reporting. It also examines procedures and policies for transporting students with special needs as well as infants, toddlers and pre-school children.

Under the conference’s parliamentary process, every section of the multipart document has to be approved by the states, requiring more than 100 voice or individually counted votes. It also spurred much discussion on the floor as delegates lobbied for dozens of amendments (and amendments to amendments) to the proposed sections.

Most of the verbiage in the document related to the nuts and bolts of equipment and operations, but the delegates also used the occasion to advance more broad-based concerns. For example, Donald Tudor, the state pupil transportation director in South Carolina, introduced an amendment that says “lap belts shall not be installed on passenger seats in large school buses (10,000 or more pounds) except in conjunction with child safety restraint systems that comply with FMVSS 213.”

Delegates from New York and New Jersey — two states that have long required the installation of lap belts on all school buses — argued against the amendment. Marion Edick, New York’s state pupil transportation director, said a better suggestion would be to require the installation of three-point lap/shoulder belt systems. Notwithstanding, Tudor’s amendment was approved by a large margin.

The delegates also approved a resolution to ask the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to revise the existing standard for seat back heights to 24 inches above the reference point. Testing performed by NHTSA showed the standard 20-inch seat backs were not tall enough to keep larger students from being pitched over the seats in head-on crashes.

Comprehensive coverage of the meeting, including comments from several of the participants, will appear in our August 2005 issue.