VB School Board buys six school buses, looks at fleet management

The Van Buren Public Schools Board of Education on Monday unanimously approved purchase of six, 77-passenger general education school buses for a total of $991,554 from Hoekstra, whose bid was in the middle of the three bidders.
The district developed a bus replacement program to replace district buses every eight years. This allows it to keep its fleet in good working order, minimize the need for major repairs, and it is able to trade them in at the end of service to recoup some cost instead of disposing of them.
To maintain this program the district needs to purchase six buses a year.
James Williams, director of plant operations, said as the buses age, repairs get more expensive and the dirt roads do a lot of damage to the fleet. Trading them in and getting some good value from the trade-in is better for the district in the long run, he said.
He also introduced a Transportation Management Software program – Transfinder — with routing, parent aps/GPS, and fleet management. It would cost $115,000 in year one and $40,000 and $38,000 in the other two years of the three-year agreement. It was discussed and is expected to be voted on at the Feb. 12 meeting.
Transportation Director Elizabeth Banks said with this equipment, they would be able to inform parents easily if there would be pick up on main roads only.
“Some roads are pretty crummy,” said board Vice Chairwoman Susan Featheringill, who was presiding at the meeting in the absence of Chairwoman Amy Pearce. Also absent and excused were Treasurer Simone Pinter and board member Dionne Falconer.
In other business at Monday’s meeting, the school board:
• Approved a resolution accepting the offer from PNC Capital Markets to purchase the Series III Bonds for $13,489,608.45 with interest of 3.93%, the lowest of eight bids. The approximate sum of $101,111.77 shall be used to pay the cost of issuance of the bonds. Finance Director Priya Nayak said because of the interest that is better than expected, the district will have $1.4 million more to spend on the Series III school projects;
• Approved the resignations of teachers April Crawford after less than a year at Owen as of Jan. 16 and Sarah Taylor after 17 years from Tyler as of Jan. 26;
• Approved two first-grade teachers, with Calista Dean at Savage as of Jan. 18 and Hannah Ryan at Tyler as of Jan. 25;
• Approved the resignations of Justin Watson from the Transportation Department after less than a year of service as of Jan. 19 and Markia Clark as a paraprofessional after one year as of Jan. 26;
• Approved employment of custodians Carrie Mayer and Cassandra Taylor, both as of Jan. 16;
• Heard resident Reg Ion say he was concerned about the number of hours the School Resource Officer spends at the high school. He said they should have a SRO at the school all day, every day and anything less is not enough. He said an officer can’t be chief of police and a school resource officer at the same time, the way it is now, and something should be done before it’s too late. Supt. Kudlak said he would get the figures;
• Heard Tracy Stanley speak for herself and three other employees of the tuition program at the Early Education Center who stood with her. She said the four are the only members of the more than 500 school district employees that are not offered any kind of union and if they disagree with anything, they are told, “This is the way it is.” Stanley said they have written to EEC Principal Becky Ross and Supt. Kudlak and have not heard back. There is no wording on snow days like other employees have. She said they go into work on snow days or have to take a personal day. If they don’t they are written up. Others get pay-and-a-half for snow days;
• Heard Supt. Kudlak report that classes will be starting after Labor Day on Sept. 3 this year because of the construction at several schools. Because of the change of the teachers’ union contract moving to the fiscal rather than school year the year’s calendar will be worked out over the summer. He said there are some common breaks through RESA that are followed across the county and they will put those on the district website so parents can see those dates;
• Went into closed-door session at the end of the meeting to consider the reinstatement of Student 23-24-002 for the 2023-24 school year. After going back into regular open session, the board voted to reinstate the student without conditions.