A requirement for sexual assault and molestation insurance has more than doubled the cost of hiring buses to take Saugus High School students to and from the senior prom later this spring, the class president said.
The initial price quote from the first bus company the seniors tried came in at $4,000 for four buses. But that company didn’t have the required insurance. From a bus company that does have it, the cost zoomed to $8,500 plus a $750 fee for an on-site supervisor, senior class president Jessica Bremberg told the Saugus School Committee, the elected board that oversees the town’s public schools.
“I’ve never even heard of that before. It just kind of blows my mind, to be honest with you,” school committee member Thomas Whittredge said during the committee meeting Thursday, March 14. “Molestation insurance?”
Sexual molestation and assault insurance covers the cost of defending against “sexual abuse and molestation claims,” according to the web site of one insurance company that carries it.
Hiring the buses for the prom is necessary because the school district has a rule against students driving themselves to or from school events, to try to increase safety.
The high school’s senior class had already raised money to cover almost all of the cost of the prom so the students didn’t have to shell out big bucks for it, especially since girls who attend already spend a lot on their dresses and hair, Bremberg said. But the class doesn’t have the extra $4,000-plus for the second price quote for buses.
Whittredge said he was disturbed by the idea that the students should have to pay for the extra insurance.
“What’s happened is the insurance, the company that insures the town that we have to go through — will not sign off on the insurance if it doesn’t have that clause in it,” Saugus superintendent Michael Hashem said. “… It went to the town, and we were told that our insurance carrier requires this clause for coach buses.”
Saugus is a town of about 28,000 about 8 miles north of Boston. The senior prom is in Georgetown, about 18 miles north of Saugus.
A high school ski trip earlier this winter ran into a similar problem with the cost of sexual molestation and assault insurance, to the point where the ski trip probably will not take place in future years, Bremberg and another senior class official told the school committee.
The senior prom is scheduled for Thursday, May 30, Bremberg said.
School committee chairman Vincent Serino called the price increase “ludicrous,” and he said school officials will cover the extra cost of the buses for the prom this spring.
“We’ll figure out the difference for you,” Serino said.
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