District busing adjusting to new three-tier busing system

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Big Wal­nut Local School District’s trans­porta­tion sys­tem is a roughly $2 mil­lion oper­a­tion, said trans­porta­tion super­vi­sor Ron McClure. Twenty-four bus dri­vers and nine sub­sti­tute dri­vers cover the school district’s 108 square miles, trav­el­ling a col­lec­tive 2,500 miles each school day, trans­port­ing 1,400 stu­dents to and from school and events.

The dis­trict owns 35 school buses. One new spe­cial needs bus and one new 71 pas­sen­ger bus should arrive in Octo­ber — the old one’s will be traded in. The fleet is main­tained by mechan­ics Pat O’Quinn and Steve Johnston.

“They’ve been very busy,” McClure said. “They got the inspec­tions done at the end of July, the state inspects the entire fleet; plus we get spot inspec­tions every year.”

But there’s a new twist this year as the dis­trict moves to a three-tier bus­ing sys­tem. To accom­mo­date the new bus­ing sys­tem bell times have changed, and routes have also changed.

Every year dri­vers bid on the routes they want, McClure said. In the past most would keep their pre­vi­ous year’s routes, but as the dis­trict moved to the three-tier bus­ing sys­tem dri­vers were allowed to re-bid on routes based on seniority.

“Dri­vers came in last Mon­day to bid on routes, and we drove the routes to be sure there are no issues or road clos­ings,” McClure said. “Then we came back to the office and revamped the routes. After every­thing is changed and adjusted it goes to the school board meet­ing for approval.”

McClure said he’s accus­tomed to three-tier bus­ing, it’s what’s always been done where he has worked before. He said one of the advan­tages of the new sys­tem is there will be no high school or mid­dle school shut­tles with stu­dents wait­ing on a bus shared with another school.

“We do antic­i­pate prob­lems dur­ing the first week or two of school,” McClure said. “There might be late buses, espe­cially at the ele­men­tary schools, but we want to take our time and make sure kids are on the right bus, espe­cially for the first two weeks.”

McClure asked par­ents to be patient until the new bus­ing sys­tem smooths out; that even though school starts on a Wednes­day, August 22, the school year’s first Mon­day, August 27, will be like the first day of school again because kinder­garten comes online.

To accom­mo­date prob­lems that might arise dur­ing the first few days of school, McClure said a few spare buses with sub­sti­tute dri­vers on board would be placed strate­gi­cally around the dis­trict for emer­gency pick-ups.

“This is the first time the Big Wal­nut dis­trict is doing three-tier bussing, and our pri­mary respon­si­bil­ity is the safety of the stu­dents — mak­ing sure they’re on the right buses and going in the right direc­tion,” McClure said. “We would like for the stu­dents to be at the bus stops five min­utes before their pick-up time as a safety issue. That way they’re not run­ning across traf­fic or in front of a bus at the last minute.”

Why three-tier busing?

“It costs $50,000 to $75,000 to add a bus to the fleet,” McClure said. “With adding the new inter­me­di­ate school we would need four new buses if we were on a two-tier bussing sys­tem. So this change alone saves $250,000 plus per year. That’s a pretty sig­nif­i­cant savings.”

Ron McClure worked at South­west­ern City Schools for 22 years, Mason City Schools for three years, then worked for Peter­son, a pri­vate school bus con­trac­tor, cov­er­ing Pick­er­ing­ton and Grove­port. McClure came on board with the dis­trict as an interim trans­porta­tion super­vi­sor in Octo­ber of 2011.

For those who think their day begins early, McClure said his day typ­i­cally begins at 6 a.m.; but when it’s snow­ing it’s not uncom­mon for him to be up and mon­i­tor­ing the weather at 2 a.m.

Par­ents can access bus route infor­ma­tion using the school district’s pass­word pro­tected online web­site. If they have con­cerns they can call the trans­porta­tion office at 740–965-8967.

To access the Big Wal­nut Trans­porta­tion web page go to < bigwalnut.k12.oh.us > and click on Depart­ments, then click Trans­porta­tion in the drop-down menu.

Big Wal­nut Trans­porta­tion Department

Ron McClure, Trans­porta­tion Supervisor

105 Baugh­man Street, Suite A,

Sun­bury OH 43074

Phone: 740–965-3010

Fax: 740–965-4688

The Big Wal­nut Bus Garage is located at 117 North Kint­ner Park­way in Sunbury.

Posted by Gary Henery on Aug 15 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.