North Mason schools upgrade bus fleet

Kirk Boxleitner | Jun 02, 20220

North Mason School District Transportation Director Maurine Simons shared with the school board May 19 details about the return of the “Fill the Bus” event, scheduled to take place Aug. 20 at the QFC parking lot in Belfair from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

“QFC does a great job of putting together packages that have the school supplies all together, right near the front,” Simons said. “The bus drivers will be out there. It’s all volunteer time.”

She added, “We’ll have our little ‘Buster Bus’ out there for the kids, and we’re coming up with some fun ideas to engage with those kids.”

Simons said the district’s transportation department always comes armed for such events with its school bus rules and safety protocols, to answer questions from parents and families, all while collecting plenty of school supplies for the kids.

“We’ll have lots of bus drivers for parents to meet” and speak with, Simons said. “It’s a great event (that) brings in a lot of school supplies for our students to be able to use, and they get distributed throughout all the schools. They have little closets at each school, to keep those supplies in for any student that needs them.”

The district’s transportation department will also host a “Meet the Bus Drivers” event that includes school bus rides from 5-7 p.m. Aug. 25 for all North Mason students.

Simons pointed out the district conducted this transportation roundup for the first time last year, so families that have been at work for previous similar events could make it out to this event.

If there’s a family that’s never been on the bus before, and their kids are nervous about riding the bus for the first time, or even if their kids are more experienced riders, who just need a reminder on the bus safety rules before school starts again, Simons invited them to come by the transportation department, down at the bus garage, where two buses will be available that day for safety demonstrations and brief rides on the bus.

“We had (more than) 50 families show up last year, and it was amazing,” Simons said. “The drivers had a lot of fun doing it with the families and seeing the excitement on all the kids’ faces (was) great.”

“Anything to remove any sort of fear from the experience, right?” Superintendent Dana Rosenbach said.

“It’s less than a week before this first day of school, so kids and parents can get that reminder of what the bus expectations are, and why (they) exist,” Simons said.

Simons said the transportation department has “long awaited” the arrival of the van it ordered last April.

“The production delays have been extensive, but it should arrive in June,” Simons said. “That’ll be a great addition to our van fleet.”

Simons touted the 10-passenger van’s ability to assist the district’s smaller sports teams in getting to their events, while she also reported that her department has ordered four new buses to replace its four oldest and/or most broken buses.

According to Simons, this should bring the entire fleet up to at least the year 2000, because its oldest bus is from 1998, and those replacements are set to arrive in November.

Simons said the old buses are auctioned off to generate money to buy new buses, but only after their “brand-new” camera systems are transferred from the old buses to the new buses.

When District 4 Director John Campbell inquired about electric school buses, Simons informed him “the best mileage (an electric school bus) can get is around 200 miles, before it needs a full charge, so that’s a difficulty for our district, because of the distance our buses travel, and the size of our district,” especially since “it can go 200 miles on flat, straight Kansas highway, not up-and-down North Mason roads.”

Cost is another obstacle to purchasing electric school buses. Simons said the new buses the district just ordered were $125,000 a piece, whereas a new electric school bus would run $325,000 to $350,000.

“There’s several meetings coming up for grants that I’ll be trying to attend,” Simone said. “I’ve set up meetings with some (bus) distributors (and) manufacturers to talk to them about their electric buses, to see what they’ve got available and where they think they’re headed.”