By T. Scott Boatright
The Lincoln Parish School Board wants students to be cool in school.
On the way to school and back home, too.
That is the reason air conditioning was a big subject as the LPSB held its August meeting Monday night at the Central Schools Office.
During that meeting, Lincoln Parish Schools Transportation Director David “Doc” Hoeffler successfully requested permission to surplus two older school buses.
“These buses are no longer of use to us,” Hoeffler said. “We had some engine issues and after getting them checked out, it would be at a greater cost for these two buses to be fixed, so we are requesting to declare these buses surplus and grant permission to dispose of them.”
Hoeffler also successfully requested permission to purchase nine new buses (six for Ruston, three for parish wide schools), and that is when the talk of air conditioning came up.
“With the demand of our extracurricular activities for everybody in our district along with field trips, we like to buy buses on a yearly basis trying to meet those needs and to also help out with our route buses — putting better buses on line,” Hoeffler said. “We also need a special needs bus in our fleet.
“As our fleet ages, we’re replacing older buses and buying newer ones. We’re trying to put air conditioning on our buses for our students.”
Hoeffler said a special needs bus will cost around $147,000 and activity buses will cost around $67,000 with funding from the Ruston District Bond and also the 1993 ad valorem.
Hoeffler said all buses bought in the last two rounds have come with air conditioning.
“We bought five last year and three the year before that, and those all had air conditioning,” Hoeffler said. “We have also used ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) money to retrofit 35 buses with air conditioning. That still leaves some, (some unairconditioned buses), but I have been talking with (Lincoln Schools Superintendent Ricky Durrett) about how we can retrofit those,”
Hoeffler said the total bus fleet number was 100 including spares with between 65-70 running routes daily and that around 50% are air conditioned.
“It costs about $20,000 to retrofit them,” Hoeffler said. “But I would not recommend doing all of the ones that don’t have air conditioning because some of them are too old. We need about 10 or 15 more done and I think we will be right on track to have all of our buses air conditioned within about two years if we can get that 10-15 more done.”
After the Board approved purchasing the new buses, Lincoln Parish Schools Auxiliary Supervisor Ricky Edmiston requested permission to advertise for bids to replace HVAC units at Simsboro Elementary, Choudrant Elementary, Ruston Elementary, Glen View Elementary and I.A. Lewis Middle School.
“They need to be upgraded,” Edmiston said. “The current HVAC systems in those classrooms are anywhere from 15 to 20 years old. It is difficult to find parts when these units go down and these units also use R22 freon, which is no longer available. We do have 404A freon and have some R-22 on hand that we use when we need it.
“We are asking to replace 28 units at Simsboro, 21 at Choudrant Elementary, 18 units at Ruston Elementary, 21 units at Glen View and 15 units at I.A. Lewis. The funds to pay for these new HVAC units are going to come from ESSER.”
Edmiston said the school systems have just put 17 units in — nine at Hillcrest Elementary and eight at Cypress Springs Elementary.
“We budgeted $190,000 for those units and the bid came in at $90,000. So, we still have an extra $100,000 from ESSER funds to use here. We can use school-based funds, and we can also use some of our District 5 mill funds, which is in really good shape right now.”
