Dist. 300 wants to add 35 school buses to its fleet

With two new elementary schools open this year and a new high school opening in the fall, Community Unit District 300 officials say they need 35 new buses.

District 300 transportation officials this week presented the school board with a plan to lease 25 full-size buses, 10 special education buses and 12 vans.

With a state reimbursement of 60 percent to 80 percent, the district would pay at least $1 million to lease the vehicles for five years. The district would own the buses at the end of the five-year lease.

Last year, when the district leased just six additional buses, the district admitted it had difficulties getting kids to school and back home on time, especially west of Randall Road.

The difficulties came six months after the school board voted to privatize the district's transportation and contract with Durham School Services.

The busing challenges will only increase next school year, when the new Hampshire High School is set to open with at least 1,200 students, and new middle and high school boundaries will mean new routes for hundreds of kids.

The district's transportation needs are based on the assumption that the district's enrollment is growing 2.6 percent a year, according to district documents.

While this is close to the percentage enrollment grew in the district last year, it includes the more than 500 students who attend the Cambridge Lakes Charter School -- which doesn't bus its students.

Without the charter school, enrollment actually shrank by 120 students, according to the district's 30-day count.

District 300 officials say many of the new leases would replace old vehicles, some with as many as 200,000 miles on them.

The smaller buses and vans will help cut down on the number of taxis the district uses to transport special-needs students, officials say.

The district was paying nearly $1 million a year to transport special education students before it privatized its transportation.

"We had taxis going everywhere, and it's been reduced to very, very few now," board President Joe Stevens said. "It's been absorbed by the Durham contract."

The district already has gone out to bid for the vehicles, and the board is set to vote on the bids in February.