Statesman reporters win Education Writers top honor for fatal Hays bus crash investigation
A team of Austin American-Statesman journalists who spent nine months investigating the state's deadliest school bus crash in nearly a decade last year received the highest honor Friday from the national Education Writers Association.
The Fred M. Hechinger Grand Prize for Distinguished Education Reporting was presented to Latino community affairs reporter Emiliano Tahui Gómez, education reporter Keri Heath and Tony Plohetski, associate editor for investigations, who co-authored and oversaw the reporting.
The prize, awarded in St. Louis at the group's annual conference, comes with $10,000. The team was selected among 14 of 17 category winners in the 2024 national awards for education reporting.
The four-part series, 'A Fatal Field Trip,' investigated the March 2024 crash in Bastrop County involving a Hays school bus returning from a trip to a zoo. The crash killed a 5-year-old student on the bus and a man traveling in a car behind the bus after a concrete pumper truck crossed lanes and hit the bus.
The driver of the truck was indicted on charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.
The reporting team revealed how a school district's decision to deploy a bus without seat belts likely contributed to injuries and death; how a lack of regulation — and reduced enforcement of existing regulations — left a dangerous driver on the road; and how after the crash, families were left to fend for themselves because of a lack of programs and services to help them emotionally heal.
The Education Writers Association also honored the work with a first-place prize in investigative and public service reporting.
Judges wrote that the reporters "tied together disparate strands usually not woven in a news package."
They added that they were "impressed by several aspects of this investigation: the deep sourcing with families and centering their stories; the excellent use of public records and analyzing the data related to buses with seat belts, inspections and more; and the 360 approach to the questions of what went wrong and what could have prevented this tragedy."
Statesman Editor in Chief Courtney Sebesta said that the work exemplifies accountability journalism at its highest level.
"There were so many layers of failure before and after this ill-fated event," said Sebesta. "These families deserved to know about regulation lapses and the public needs to understand the lack of resources available to help victims heal after an incident like this."
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Statesman journalists win EWA top prize for fatal bus crash coverage
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