Safety and efficiency were the main focus of a discussion regarding district transportation at Wednesday’s Washington School Board meeting.
A consent agenda item was the purchase of a new school bus. While it was approved to begin this process with bidding, Washington Superintendent Willy Stone also shared his thoughts on the future of the bus fleet for the district, “We are going to switch over to propane (buses). Cost saving wise, they take a lot less oil. We won’t ever have to worry about our buses jelling up with kids on it. I talk about school safety a lot and making sure our kids are in the safest environment possible. The other thing we are going to do in that is ask them to bid seat belts as an extra. Looking at the possibility of adding seat belts to the bus and see what that costs. I believe in the next five years, we’ll be required to have kids have seat belts on the bus.”
Stone has talked with Woody Harden, Washington District Transportation Director, about staying current with the 10-year plan. This plan would see a gradual replacement of vehicles in the district yearly, as opposed to a mass replacement of the majority of the fleet at the same time. With a rolling yearly replacement of at most a couple of vehicles and a couple of buses, Stone hopes to avoid a massive hit to the district’s budget in any given year. It has the goal of only using a vehicle in the district for the 10-year period after it is purchased before it’s replaced.
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