Everyone’s supposed to stop for school buses that have their flashing red light arm extended, except for on the opposite side of a divided highway.
Emergency vehicles routinely go through red lights.
Are emergency vehicles also allowed to go through school bus landing zones?
Depends on the law of the particular state and the SOP of the emergency vehicles agency.
My agencies policy is that we stop and wait for the bus driver to acknowledge our presence and wait for the driver to wave us on. Then we proceed past with due caution. Bus drivers are typically trained for this situation. YMMV depending on jurisdiction.
We were just talking about this last night (skools open here in the next week or two, so it was a reminder). @pkbites nailed it; as with most things emergency services it’s going to vary by state & company policy. We don’t go thru unless waived on.
Nitpick: Stop & proceed when clear/safe, not just ‘go thru’.
However, around here, because of the use of OptiComs/preemption devices we rarely get red lights. ← the EV (or in some cases bus) have a optical or RF transmitter; the traffic light has a receiver that turns the light red in every direction except for where the EV is coming from; they get a green light. Confirmation feedback is via a white flashing light on the top of the pole. WIth both a green light & confirmation that everyone else has a red, the EV can go straight or turn as necessary w/o the need to slow down. (except enough to keep all wheels on the ground 
)
Right- no sense in running over a child on the way to do something else.
At least around here, there aren’t “school bus landing zones”, except maybe at the schools themselves, and they’re very frequently not on the main roads anyway. Otherwise, the buses just flip on the red blinking lights, and everyone slows to a stop and lets the kiddos get off/on the bus.
It would make sense for emergency vehicles to obey this as well- I could see the case being that if a cop/ambulance was behind a bus, the driver might stop, but NOT put the red lights on or let kids off in order to let the emergency vehicle pass. But I suspect that if the kids were in the middle of getting on/off, the emergency vehicle would wait until the kids were situated.
Based solely on a conversation with a cop acquaintance years ago…
Going Code 3 (lights and sirens) does not give the emergency vehicle driver carte blanche to violate traffic laws.
In my state, they are required to come to a stop and proceed when safe to do so, when running a red light. Most will kinda slow down and make sure it is safe but technically are in violation of the law. But who is gonna pull them over and give them a ticket? But the cops don’t want to die in an accident, or run over a kid, so most of them adhere to at least the spirit of the laws.
While you might get a ticket for failing to yield to an emergency vehicle, the same laws would get you a million dollar settlement if they came flying through a red light at 60 mph and T-boned you. And the cop would have a lot of paperwork to do.
While there are some idiots who are aware of the EV, but don’t seem to know what to do, he said there are people who who are just oblivious to the EV. They are dangerous to the EV and they have to be on the look out for those people.
Slight off-topic: I once had to run a red light in front of a police car so I could get out of his way when he came up behind me (I was second in line at the stoplight) with lights on. Once the car in front of me got out of my way so I could move, I did it and the police car went hurrying along as soon as it was possible.
Not here (every state different etc etc). The last thing a police car in a hurry wants is to have to attend another traffic accident on the way to a call out.