By Kyle Roberts
The Lincoln Parish School Board is set for a Tuesday vote on sending a $17.5 million bond proposal to the public for an April election that includes multiple projects and enhancements for Ruston School District No. 1.
One of the pieces of the proposal includes a $900,000 allocation for activity buses for District No. 1; a price that could possibly include purchasing as many as six activity buses that will never run routes, which would coincide with a yearly sunsetting of a yet-to-be determined number of route buses out of the fleet due to age and mileage.
For LPSB superintendent Ricky Durrett, this is a need that could be very helpful to District No. 1 for both sports and field trips.
“This could be a huge benefit to our athletic programs and even our elementary and junior high schools that go on field trips,” Durrett said. “Most of our trips are not just across the parish; they are to Monroe, Shreveport and Alexandria. Playoff games, regular season games; there’s a lot more travel involved nowadays with that. Having a bus that has the seat belts, has a little bit more comfort, a little more room and storage would be a big advantage of putting our athletes in a better situation riding. I think all of those things factor into being able to get off the bus and play a ballgame and would help a lot.”
LPSB transportation supervisor Doc Hoefler echoed Durrett’s comments in a Tuesday interview from this week and spoke to the safety of begin able to immediately move some of the newer activity buses already in the fleet to route buses.
“It will help us with athletics, no doubt, but it will help with our routes much better,” Hoefler said. “We will have safer, newer route buses out there running road miles.”
Currently, the parish owns approximately 100 buses at any given time, with 80 that run daily that include Simsboro, Ruston, Choudrant, Dubach and special needs routes. Nearly 3,000 kids in Lincoln Parish are bused every school day.
Of the remaining estimated 20 buses, around 15 buses are newer and designated as activity buses first, and five are used as spares in case of an incident, such as a breakdown or a flat tire.
“The differences between the two types of buses are a route bus has the stop arm and the stop sign,” Hoefler said. “It’s also yellow. The activity buses that we are looking to purchase will not have the stop arms, which means you cannot run them on a route.”
Currently, LPSB has newer buses in the fleet that are designated for activity routes, but they are buses that would still, for all intents and purposes, be capable of running regular routes because they have the stop arms and stop signs. Currently, they run activity field trip routes during the school year, unless there are issues where they run out of spare buses. These new buses would not be able to be used as spare route buses because of the lack of stop arms and stop signs.
Concerning the number of buses in the main fleet, a potential issue of adding up to six new activity buses into the rotation could potentially raise the cost of operation and maintenance. Hoefler explains why there is not expected to be an increase, citing the yearly retiring of buses and purchase of newer ones.
“There is going to be no difference,” Hoefler said. “We’ll retire a certain amount of route buses, regardless. We’re planning to get three to five buses next year, no matter what. It’s just that we could have the chance to purchase strictly activity buses for the fleet.”
The plan, should the bond measure pass, is to purchase six activity buses and then retire the appropriate amount of route buses based on a criteria that includes age and mileage. The goal is to not add more to the fleet than necessary.
Outside of not having the features of a route bus, the activity buses will have some new amenities for students that are traveling for activities and sports.
“We’ll have storage underneath the bus,” Hoefler said. “Then, we’ll also have individualized seating and seat belts. One of the biggest things with route buses is safety being compartmentalized with the way seats are built. And with activity buses, what we’re looking at getting is more of the captain’s chair, bucket seats for each individual person and having its own seatbelt with that.
Each activity bus will be air-conditioned and heated, as well, and are expected to hold around 48 total seats. For context, route buses boast around a 72-passenger capacity, but that’s with three to each bench seat, which is not feasible for older students.
Sports teams also spend money to rent out charter buses for longer trips, such as the football team requiring multiple charter buses to get to the state championship game in 2022 and 2023.
“When I added everything up that was paid, it was around $120,000 over two years,” Hoefler said, admitting that is a conservative estimate given that some teams use funds from their private booster accounts for travel.
A typical route bus also has a proposed driving life of 20 years for running road miles, though Hoefler admitted it’s closer to 12 years due to the “start-stop” of pick-ups in populated areas of the parish that are more dense than their rural counterparts. This requires the warranty, Hoefler added, to be taken into consideration.
“When we purchase a bus now, it goes into activity rotation it is there for two to five years,” Hoefler said. “It’s running road miles and doing great. When we move it to route rotation, the warranty is out and is not running roads miles and issues occur that could have been fixed within the warranty period. Getting the activity buses helps with this situation where we are able to work out the issues while the bus is still under warranty.”
