(a) The county superintendent of schools, the superintendent of a school district, a charter school, or the owner or operator of a private school that provides transportation to or from a school or school activity shall notify the Department of Motor Vehicles, in a form and manner that the Department of Motor Vehicles specifies, within five calendar days after the county office of education, the governing board of a school district, the charter school, the owner or operator of the private school, or, in situations where the transportation services are contracted out, the driver’s employer, has done both of the following:

(1) Ordered and upheld disciplinary action, after completion of disciplinary procedures conducted in compliance with rights granted by law or a collective bargaining agreement, against a driver of a schoolbus, school pupil activity bus, or youth bus who was found to have left the immediate vicinity of the vehicle to which the driver had been assigned with an unsupervised pupil onboard.

(2) Made a finding that the driver’s actions constituted gross negligence.

(b) For purposes of this section, escorting pupils pursuant to paragraph (1) of subdivision (d) of Section 22112 of the Vehicle Code shall not be considered leaving the immediate vicinity of the vehicle.

(c) For purposes of this section, “gross negligence” means the want of even scant care or an extreme departure from the ordinary standard of conduct.

(Added by Stats. 2016, Ch. 721, Sec. 3. (SB 1072) Effective January 1, 2017.)