Fairbanks eyes bus replacement plan

At its meeting Monday night, the Fairbanks Board of Education received a presentation about the district’s school bus replacement plan.
Andy James and Becky Wyckoff informed the board about how often buses need to be replaced, what repairs need to be done to maintain them and efficiency considerations. They came at the request of board vice president Mark Lippencott during the August meeting to give the board an idea of what the school bus replacement schedule looks like.
James and Wyckoff talked about how they’ve helped make repairs on current buses, as well as identify problematic buses that need to be disposed.
“I don’t even know how some of these buses passed inspection,” James said.
James said Fairbanks has 20 buses, with 18 full size and two “micro” buses. He said there are 13 routes, and there are usually eight buses leftover to spare.
The board raised concerns about the abundance of buses leftover, especially after three routes were eliminated this year. Wyckoff said she’s “comfortable with what we have” when it comes to the number of buses, as it gives the district more buses to use for future routes, sporting events and to stock a safe number of students on them.
James and Wyckoff said it would be beneficial to replace and keep spare buses because they’d be helpful in an emergency.
James said his concern with the bus replacement program involved the 14-year lifetime of a bus in Ohio, and said the board should consider the kind of elements Ohio buses are put through compared to other states’ buses. He also said it’s important to be replacing these buses once their mileage surpasses 230,000.
“With us having our buses sitting out in the elements in the salt and brine, that eats these buses up,” James said. “After so many years, they rust away from the inside out.”
According to James’ and Wyckoff’s report, the district went from spending $676,360 for bus costs in 2015 to $617,579 in 2016, which is a $58,781 difference. There was a drop passengers riding the bus too, from 557 passengers in 2015 to 544 in 2016.
Although costs and passenger counts went down, the daily miles racked up by buses went up from 999 in 2015 to 1,323 miles in 2016.
James and Wyckoff also talked about the potential switch to propane-powered buses, as opposed to diesel-operated ones.
After their presentation, the board approved the disposal of bus number five.
Also at the meeting, Superintendent Bob Humble said he has a concern with the state’s new attendance-tracking policy. He said, according to House Bill 410, the district’s secretaries went from tracking for tardiness and absence to having to calculate the time a tardy or absent student lost in potential education time.
He said the new tracking measures are making an overwhelming work situation for the secretaries, who he said are bringing their work home with them just to catch up. He proposed to the board the hiring of an aide to the secretaries.
The board presented two options to pursue: either have the aide be trained to work solely on tracking attendance or have the aide fill in for the secretaries when they have to complete attendance tracking.
“We may get to the point where 15 hours isn’t getting it and we’re still falling behind,” Humble said. “I just note that, the three people who are extremely competent and have been doing this for a while, if they can’t get (the attendance work) done, there’s a reason.”
The board expressed concerns for whether the secretaries will need the aide for more or less than 15 hours a week, or if the secretaries would even want to work overtime if the board didn’t want to hire an aide.
The board decided to make a decision on the secretary’s aide for next meeting.