Town of Hempstead issued 80,000 school bus camera tickets in districts that don't participate in program

The Town of Hempstead issued more than 80,000 school bus camera tickets over the last two years in and around school districts that never agreed to participate in the controversial program, a Newsday investigation found.

The tickets, issued within the Baldwin, Hempstead, Lawrence and Valley Stream 13 districts, represent more than a quarter of all school bus camera citations issued in the town in 2023 and 2024, according to data provided by town officials. They are worth, if collected, roughly $20 million to the program.

State and local law explicitly requires school district approval for bus camera tickets to be issued on their behalf, a step that leaders of four districts in southwestern Nassau County told Newsday they did not take. But officials in two of those districts said their school buses are equipped with cameras and one superintendent said those cameras are generating tickets, which would conflict with the law.

"It’s baffling to me that tickets would be issued when they know they did not have the authority to do it," Baldwin Union Free School District Superintendent Shari Camhi said in an interview.

Lawrence, another school district that doesn't participate in the bus camera program, published a letter on its website saying tickets issued within its boundaries are "void." 

This lack of local school district approval raises the question of whether the roughly 80,000 tickets identified by Newsday were issued improperly, according to legal experts. If so, the experts, who have experience in municipal and school district law, said it could be grounds for a class-action lawsuit. 

The conflict in Hempstead, as North Hempstead and Oyster Bay launch their own school bus camera ticket programs, comes amid other ongoing controversies. Newsday reported last year that 70% of bus camera tickets issued in Suffolk County, where the program was launched countywide in 2021, were given on streets that students don't cross when getting on or off the bus.

It’s baffling to me that tickets would be issued when they know they did not have the authority to do it.

— Shari Camhi, Baldwin Union Free School District superintendent

The state has long forbidden drivers to pass school buses picking up or dropping off children. But a 2019 law gave local governments more teeth, allowing them to install cameras on school buses and issue tickets to drivers who fail to stop. That law required local governments to reach agreements with school districts to run the cameras on buses operated by those districts and issue tickets to people passing those buses.

Hempstead Town passed its own school bus camera law in 2022, which also requires districts to sign on to the program. The town contracted with Virginia-based BusPatrol America to install the cameras on buses and to manage the ticket program. In exchange, BusPatrol gets 45% of the ticket revenue, while the town keeps the remaining 55%. Tickets carry a minimum fine of $250.

In the two full years since the program launched, the town has written more than 270,000 school bus camera tickets, or about one ticket for every three Hempstead residents. The volume eclipses what has been issued in all of Suffolk, where at least 65 school districts have opted in to the county's program.

More than two dozen school districts have signed on to Hempstead Town's bus camera ticket program, records show, leaving little question to the validity of citations issued in those areas.

But some 50,000 other tickets were written in Hempstead Union Free School District, even though it never agreed to join the program and does not offer busing to its general student body. The district buses about 900 special education students, as well as children who attend private and parochial schools, school board officials said.

Even Victor Pratt, president of Hempstead's district school board, got a ticket within the district. Pratt told Newsday he received a citation for allegedly passing a school bus on South Franklin Street.

"It does strike me as odd," Pratt said when asked why the town issued so many tickets in his district, considering his school board never voted to participate in the program. "I’m trying to figure it out in my head."

'No geographic limits'

Hempstead Town officials said the tickets in the nonparticipating school districts can be explained by buses from districts that are part of the program making stops within neighboring districts that are not.

"While the districts identified may not have opted in to have their school buses participate in the program at this current time, ticketing can and does still occur in these areas by any in-service school bus that originated from a school district that has opted in to the program," Hempstead Town spokesman Brian Devine said in a statement. "As such, there are no geographic limits on the program and enforcement of the state law can occur townwide by statute."

For example, school buses operated by the Freeport school district, or by any other district that has joined the town's bus camera program, are permitted to record violations wherever those buses make stops to pick up students, including outside district boundaries.

But that doesn't explain the scale of ticketing in the districts not participating in the program. Devine declined to answer further specific questions from Newsday.

Ticketing can and does still occur … by any in-service school bus that originated from a school district that has opted in to the program.

— Brian Devine, Hempstead Town spokesman

Only limited circumstances — like a homeless student being bused to the district they previously attended school — would call for an out-of-district bus to pick up a student in their home district, said Jay Worona, deputy executive director and general counsel for the New York State School Boards Association.

Bus camera tickets are only issued when drivers pass a school bus making a stop to pick up or drop off students, not if buses happen to be passing through another district.

"It shouldn’t be a multitude of fines every day," Worona said about out-of-district buses capturing violations. "Perhaps some type of litigation will be needed to resolve the ticketing in an area that has not agreed to participate."

Austin Graff, the Hempstead school district's attorney, said the school board was "flabbergasted" at the scale of ticketing within the district, which he repeatedly called "crazy." Graff said he could not think of any circumstance in which so many citations would be issued within Hempstead district by out-of-district school buses.

District: Tickets 'void'

But school district officials in Baldwin, Hempstead and Lawrence have said that cameras have been rolling on their own school buses.

"That would not be permissible," said Paul Sabatino, an attorney and former Suffolk County legislative counsel, about Hempstead Town issuing tickets from buses operating for districts that haven’t joined the program. "You didn’t even have the jurisdiction from the get-go" to issue those tickets.

In Baldwin, where the town issued more than 15,000 tickets over the past two years, the buses are equipped with cameras and are using them in the district, said Camhi, the district superintendent.

"We have not entered into any contractual agreement with the town," she told Newsday. "We had a lot of conversations around this and we came to the conclusion that we didn’t have a role in this."

Baldwin, like the other three nonparticipating districts, does not own a fleet of buses and contracts out student transportation to private bus providers.

Graff told Newsday that the Hempstead district contracts with busing provider First Student, and said those buses — which also run routes for program participants — are equipped with BusPatrol cameras. First Student did not respond to requests for comment.

Grace Kwon, spokeswoman with ZE Creative Communications, which represents Lawrence district, said she couldn’t say if the citations issued there were from district-contracted buses or those from another district, but she added that aside from busing for preschoolers and some private transportation, no other district’s buses pick up students in Lawrence.

Despite this, Hempstead Town issued roughly 18,000 school bus tickets in Lawrence district in 2023 and 2024, records show.

Addressing the matter in a June letter obtained by Newsday, Lawrence School Board President Murray Forman wrote: "There is no authorization for summonses to be issued on behalf of the Lawrence UFSD at any location within the borders of School District 15. Summonses issued within the boundaries of the district are therefore void and cannot be upheld."

The district has since posted an updated version of the letter on its website, ready for use by those ticketed in Lawrence.

‘Relentless phone calls’

Around the time the Town of Hempstead approved its school bus camera program, officials from the town and BusPatrol began contacting school districts, urging them to sign on to the program, emails obtained by Newsday show.

On Feb. 10, 2022, Hempstead sent a letter signed by Town Supervisor Don Clavin and former BusPatrol Chief Executive Jean Souliere to the Valley Stream 13 district, advertising the new bus camera program and asking the district to consider joining.

That May, BusPatrol employee Thomas Tokarz followed up with Valley Stream 13 Superintendent Judith LaRocca, asking "if there was anything I could do to assist your district move forward with BusPatrol’s automated stop-arm program."

An email from BusPatrol to the Valley Stream 13 district seeking their participation in the school bus camera program.

Along with that email, Tokarz sent draft language for a school board resolution that would authorize the district’s participation in the program. The resolution states that districts not agreeing could not be part of the bus camera program. Also included was an "opt-in agreement" the district could sign to confirm its intention to join the program.

LaRocca told Tokarz, "all of our transportation is contracted, we do not have our own busses, please make a note," the emails show.

Despite Tokarz pushing again, Valley Stream 13 never agreed to participate in Hempstead Town’s school bus camera program. Still, the town has issued nearly 18,000 tickets in Valley Stream, with many of those within the borders of the 13th district.

That wasn’t the only district being solicited by BusPatrol. Emails obtained by Newsday show the same draft language and opt-in agreements were also sent to other districts in the town.

Camhi said Baldwin district "did receive relentless phone calls to sign on" from BusPatrol.

A spokesman for BusPatrol did not provide Newsday with a comment for this story.

Ticketing continues

Mark Maguire was driving south on Grand Avenue in Baldwin one morning last October. The sun hadn’t yet come up. A school bus heading in the opposite direction stopped just short of Lorenz Avenue to pick up a student.

Maguire passed the bus in his silver Nissan truck just as the flashing stop sign on the driver side of the bus activated, but before it was fully extended, video from the incident shows.

About two weeks later, Hempstead sent Maguire a $250 ticket for passing the bus, one of more than 11,000 citations issued to drivers on Grand Avenue in Baldwin over the past two years.

Maguire told Newsday he believes he didn’t have time to stop for the bus and that he shouldn’t have been ticketed. He has requested a hearing and plans to plead not guilty.

Joseph Aron, an attorney who has sued both the Town of Hempstead and Suffolk County over their school bus camera programs, said that Hempstead issuing thousands of tickets in nonparticipating school districts is just the latest problem with the program.

"The town has been routinely ignoring clear mandates of law and binding court precedent for issuing a notice of liability in the first place," he said. "So, it’s not surprising to learn that they’re issuing tickets without the required legal authority of various school districts."

Aron added that Hempstead should refund any fines paid by drivers based on tickets issued where the town did not have the authority to write them.

The town did not answer questions about what would happen to these tickets if they are found to have been issued improperly.