SPECIAL REPORT
different places,” he said, noting for a variety of reasons that none of the Stafford district’s 311 buses run on alternative fuels. “You’ve got to look at all those pieces, and then when you start getting into the budgets, how is that sustainable? You can basically buy two (diesel) buses for one EV, and you’re struggling just to be able to buy buses for your fleet. How can you justify to your taxpayers that you’re basically buying one bus for every two?” Joyner agreed. “We do have some propane buses, but I haven’t
heard any interest at all on electrification...,” he added. “For elec- trification, we’d have to hire a different type of technician, and I also worry about how long is that bus going to last us.” The HopSkipDrive poll also found 60 percent of school leaders said they’ve eliminated or reduced bus services this year, up from 40 percent last year. Joyner said the Union County district consol- idated routes coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, including pulling service from gated communities. “We changed bell times up to about 20 minutes to some schools. That way allows us to go back and run quick doubles morning and afternoon, if need be,” he said. “So, we went from roughly 289 buses pre-COVID to 202 this year and added seven minivans to our fleet to help with our EC and McKinney-Vento kids.”
A New Approach Last year’s school start was anything but smooth for the Jeffer-
son County Public Schools in Louisville, Kentucky. Classes were delayed one week due to a “pretty catastrophic opening day … where we had routes that were way too long, a huge lack of bus drivers, and our service was pretty bad,” said Rob Fulk, the district’s chief operations officer. “We spent a year in that hell, where we had schools that were waiting two to three hours after the bell to have kids picked up. We had students going late to school. We had a very clear impetus to change, and we felt by focusing entirely on good service and good communication between our schools, our parents and our bus drivers that we could solve the problem.” The result was a complete overhaul of the district routing plan and a procedural rewrite of how the transportation department supports schools, tracks buses and responds to issues. “There wasn’t any aspect that we didn’t change dramatical-
ly in our transportation department, including going back to geographic regions, starting a district-based routing team as op- posed to using any outside vendor, and our own internal routers,” Fulk said. “We completely changed how we did our intake, call center and communications with parents. We added significant technology to all of our buses. One of the big game changers for us was Samsara technology, which gave us several cameras on every bus that allowed us real time [access] to see where students were, what stops they got off, as well as real-time GPS on the bus that gives us exactly where it’s at, what their timing is on the route, and a whole host of other things.” Another plus was driver input sought by Fulk, transportation
director Marcus Dobbs, and their teams. “We really partnered with our bus drivers’ primary union, Teamsters Local 783, as
22 School Transportation News • OCTOBER 2024
Top Challenges experienced at school start up this year:
1. Driver shortage
2. Communications (with parents, drivers, etc.)
3. Budget
4. Bell times & routing (on-time delivery)
5. Student behavior 6. Illegal passing
7. Danger zone safety/ incidents
8. Mechanic shortage 9. Training
10. Technology adoption/ implementation
11. Contractor oversight
12. Vehicle shortage (delayed delivery, mechanic issues, out of service, etc.)
13. Students left on school buses
(Out of 67 responses to a recent STN reader survey.)
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