Waco Independent School District is reviewing its bus fleet to figure out which vehicles already meet the state’s new seat belt standards and which ones will need to be upgraded or replaced. The district says it plans to be in compliance with Senate Bill 546, which requires three-point seat belts on all school buses by 2029.
That deadline is already shaping decisions in central Texas. Monquoe Brock said Waco ISD is working through the implementation phase and looking at whether each bus is eligible for compliance work, while also pursuing grant funding to help cover the cost. “They do have up until 2029 to make sure that all fleet is in compliance,” Brock said, adding that “any time any large project is implemented, the money has to come from somewhere.”
The district’s approach reflects a larger calculation taking place across Texas school systems: how to meet a safety mandate without blowing up local budgets. Brock said the district is comparing vendor pricing and checking whether buses can be brought into compliance at the best possible cost. “I think a lot of what we ran into ourselves in the beginning was vendors’ pricing, comparing if the buses are eligible, if we can get a better price from one vendor, didn’t we get that the other just to make sure that we’re getting the district the best price to make sure that we can get all the buses into compliance,” Brock said.
Killeen ISD has reached a different conclusion for now. Trustees there determined that putting three-point seat belts on every school bus is not feasible within the district’s current budget. About half of its buses already have the belts, but the district said retrofitting and replacing the remaining buses would cost an estimated $10.2 million.
The contrast underscores the pressure on districts as the 2029 deadline approaches. The mandate itself is not the point of dispute; the fight is over how to pay for it and finish the work on time. Waco ISD says it will comply, but its next steps depend on grants, pricing and board-level decisions about where scarce dollars go. Killeen ISD has made clear that for now, the math does not work.
Across Texas, districts are now moving through the same process: checking fleets, pricing upgrades and deciding which buses can be converted and which must be replaced before the deadline arrives. The state has set the requirement. The real test is whether local districts can make the numbers fit.
