OCALA, FL (352today.com) – There is a need for more bus drivers.
The Marion County Public School Board unanimously approved a contract for bus service the evening of Oct. 22, 2024.
The vendor decides how many bus drivers to hire. They can pay more, but it won’t lead to job losses in the school district.
The contract is worth about $1.74 million and is based on a previous agreement from Polk County. It aims to support the alternative program at Marion Technical Institute (MTI). The contract is with School District Services, Inc. located in Atlanta, Georgia.
Students at MTI participate in work study programs. These students have completed their high school certificates and are now in an additional three years of education through the exceptional education program. They receive support to develop work skills, aiming for success by age 21.
MTI also serves students from kindergarten to 8th grade, who are part of the exceptional student education program and require specific strategies for learning. Additionally, some students at MTI are there due to violations of the student conduct code. These students may be placed at MTI for 45 days as an alternative or for an entire school year due to expulsion.
“The transportation needs at MTI for that group of students who are committing behavior infractions that can change quite frequently,” said Dr. Ann Hembrook, MCPS Senior Executive Director of Student Pathways. “It’s very hard to determine exactly how often those students will change because it really depends on the behavior infractions out at the school settings at their base school. Because these changes happen so frequently, it can impact a bus driver’s routes to MTI.”
Adding more students to a bus route affects everyone on that route. Their pickup times may change, and the route itself will also be different for the bus driver. This makes the pickup times less consistent and more variable when new students are included.
At the end of each quarter, they review which students have qualified to return to their base school. Notifications are sent to the schools and transportation services, showing that these students can go back. Transportation arrangements are updated at the end of every quarter.
“Transportation does an amazing job in working with alternative learning to try to route those students, but because of the number of students that we’re talking about – it’s just not our students here – or the other things that they have going on, they ask us to allot for at least 10 days to route a particular student,” said Hembrook.
During those 10 days, students are losing days and access to educational services.
“We definitely want those kids in school as quickly as possible,” said Hembrook.
The piggyback contract was one of the options to outsource and provide a service to get students routed more quickly and provide consistency for the bus drivers.
There are 18 routes that service MTI. A route encompasses all schools that a particular bus services. All of the buses on those routes service other schools, so it may be one or two other schools in addition to MTI.
“When we made the decision to outsource our services for MTI, we didn’t do so lightly,” said Eric Ostanik, MCPS Supervisor of Transportation. ‘We were able to take the current routes that service MTI, add our open routes to those and create new routes to be able to close the gap on the 10 routes that are open right now around the district.”