Texas Senate Bill 546, which took effect Sept. 1, 2025, requires Texas public school buses to transition to three-point seat belts, including lap-and-shoulder restraints, for every passenger and driver. Prior to the legislation, seat belts were generally required only on buses manufactured in 2018 or later. The state’s compliance goal is for all districts to meet the requirement by the 2029-30 school year.

At tonight’s regular board meeting, Deputy Superintendent Alex Salazar and Transportation Director Abel Narvaez presented an update on the district’s school bus fleet and recommended developing a replacement plan to phase out older buses that are near the end of their life cycle, rather than retrofitting them with three-point seat belts.

Liberty Hill ISD currently operates a fleet of 86 buses. Of those, 63 buses are equipped with three-point seat belts, seven buses have two-point seat belts, and 16 buses do not have seat belts installed. Only buses equipped with three-point seatbelts are currently used on daily bus routes.

The cost to retrofit a bus with three-point seat belts ranges from $29,000 to $39,000 per vehicle.

Salazar said the average lifecycle of a school bus is 12 to 15 years or between 150,000 and 250,000 miles with proper maintenance. Of the 23 buses that do not currently meet the three-point seatbelt requirement, 17 have already exceeded the recommended age or mileage limits. The remaining six buses are expected to age out by 2029.

Rather than investing more than $800,000 to retrofit older buses, Salazar and Narvaez recommended developing a replacement plan that phases out older buses, which is an item that the long range planning committee has been discussing.

“Safety is of the utmost importance when transporting children on our school buses,” Salazar said. “We believe that purchasing newer buses that have three-point seatbelts is the wisest approach to not only child safety and legal compliance, but also fiscal responsibility.”