seven routes for two smaller neighboring districts and performs all vehicle maintenance. That’s not counting the 120 white fleet vehicles Grossmont operates. But de- spite the new facility, Rasure said he has no more room to accommodate those vehicles which will also fully transition to electricity under state mandate. A different facility will house those. Rasure explained that the former building was not big


enough to pull two full-sized buses into the area that served as the garage. “There was a dimly lit wooden structure, that over the course of years had to be modified in order for the buses to be brought into the building. Most of the work was done outside under a shade structure. Very, very little work was done inside,” he shared. Now, both sides of the shop open up and multiple


in-ground lifts ensure all service work is performed in- doors. The district’s mechanics also have new Snap-On toolboxes purchased under a government contract, and the tools are laser-engraved to ensure they are stored correctly. The new building is well lit, though not air conditioned (the area regularly gets into the 90s during the summer), but Rasure said the space remains well ventilated with new fans. “It’s just a great place to work if you’re a technician or mechanic,” he added. “It has a bus wash. It has a chas- sis wash if we have to do anything underneath the bus. Obviously, a tire shop. It is totally state of the art. I could not ask for a facility any better.” He added the new facility features a new parts depart-


ment in only one location rather than spread across the two-story facility in containers. It also has a common area for welding, drill presses, saw clips and a large tool crib. Monitors in the garage now show work assign- ments, which buses are running, and which need work. All transportation office staff are located upstairs, where


upgraded training rooms can now accommodate 90 peo- ple and include portable large-screen monitors. The only thing Rasure said he doesn’t like is that the bus driver break room remains in an existing standalone building. “We just didn’t have the space to add on to the building,” he shared.


Up until last spring, White County School District


in northern Georgia was operating its transportation services out of a literal barn that was constructed in 1974. The district’s school buses were parked next to the dis- trict’s agriculture barn, where cows were once shown in the parking lot. “It had two stalls. One was a drive through and was


one was just a single pull-in [and] back-out,” said Sharon Hipps, who became the director of transportation in No- vember 2021. “We have 71 buses, three mechanics, and so they couldn’t all work at the same time. They had to work on one at a time. Basically, you could maybe do two.” There was one fueling station for those 71 buses, the


24 School Transportation News • AUGUST 2023


old “flip the switch, write down your mileage,” type as Hipps described it. “It was just completely outdated. And to bring us up into the 21st Century, the decision was to make to really build a state-of-the-art building, which is what we have now.” The new four-bay, drive-through building that opened


in February—not quite a year after ground broke—in- cludes a floor lift and a drive-on lift, with plans to add a third mobile lift. The three mechanics also have their own workstations and oil, grease and transmission fluid that are pumped into the garage from 5-gallon drums. “They just pull [the hoses] down, fill the vehicle. This re-


duces having tons of bottles sitting around, you know, with flammable fluids in it inside your building,” she explained. “Before, you would have to have just stacked up against your wall all these different fluids. And then you have the empty bottles. … We don’t have to do that anymore.” Personnel no longer needs to worry about storing flammable fluids inside the building, either, she added. And her staff is now able to track fuel usage and recently added school bus GPS systems. On the horizon is parts inventory management software. Despite construction cost increases arising from the COVID-19 pandemic and inflation, Hipps said the district completed the building only slightly over the original $4.6 million budget, granted with a few cuts to its original plans. A new one-cent special purpose local option sales tax, or SPLOST, paid for the project. The planning for the new building began in 2019,


before Hipps joined the district in November 2021 follow- ing supervisory roles for both Gwinnett County School District and Cobb County School District, but she certain- ly was informed of the constraints the old “barn” put on transportation staff. Personnel all shared one office. Now, the facility has four offices, a conference room, a driver room, and storage areas. Hipps, a Georgia-certified school bus instructor, was also able to bring training in-house to the new classrooms, whereas the district used to send drivers to neighboring districts for training. The building is also fully wired to add new technology such as addi- tional cameras and monitors. One monitor already in the garage allows mechanics to cast what they are working on to the screen so they can ensure quality. The new building also features LED lighting and a


paved parking lot to replace the old gravel driveway, a priority for Superintendent Laurie Burkett. “When we were deciding on [project] cuts, she made


the decision not to cut asphalt, to stay away from gravel,” Hipps explained. “You have trouble with those bad rains and then it has a wash out and you’ve got to fill it back in or drag it. She made it a priority to continue with the as- phalt and it’s been amazing for me. It’s that footing for the drivers, confidence walking through the lot that they’re not going fall or get injured. Workers’ comp is reduced.” And the facility now has multiple restrooms for staff


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