Making the case for new school buses
10 new bus purchases could bring down average age of fleet, according to district’s transportation department
LANSDALE » As the North Penn School Board continues a series of discussions on various departments’ budgets for the 201819 school year, the transportation department took their turn Thursday night.
Transportation Coordinator Nick Kraynak described the small army of drivers, mechanics, and support staff needed to take the district’s students safely to and from school each day.
“We have exactly 100 fulltime, benefit-eligible bus drivers, van drivers and bus aides. We also have 89 part-time
substitute bus drivers, van drivers and aides,” Kraynak said.
Six full-time transportation staff and six mechanics work each day to care for, route, and repair a total of 42 public school vehicles, who transport 12,781 students each day in 2017, in addition to a total of 42 non-public school vehicles who transport roughly 1,800 non-public school students each day. In the 2016-17 school year, North Penn’s fleet drove a combined total of 1.67 million miles, and consumed a total of just shy of 249,000 gallons of diesel fuel, he said — all figures the department is looking to improve, any way it can.
“One of the things that I’m introducing this year, that’s going to be a costsaver for our department, is an automated field trip management solution,” Kraynak said.
“This will require no additional cost for the district, it’s already available within our suite of routing software. However, it will save time for submitting approvals: basically, it’s just a one-click approval process for all of our field trips,” he said.
Switching to an all-online system instead of relying on paper forms will let information be exchanged instantly, while staff won’t have to visit various school buildings to track down paper copies of documents or secure signatures. Parents would be able to sign on and fill out trip permission forms online, and drivers can upload student rosters remotely, get cost estimates, email in notifications if their passenger lists change, and work with staff to find the most efficient routes.
What those drivers and students are using is a different question, and one that may require attention from the school board, Kraynak said.
“The average age of our buses at North Penn is 12.6 years old. In terms of school buses, that’s ancient,” he said.
“We have some buses that are as old as 21 years old. They have 1997 chassis on them, and it’s extremely difficult for us to keep up with the maintenance on them,” he said.
Those older buses tend to be held in reserve and only used when absolutely necessary, Kraynak said, because staff have to either shop around or handfabricate certain parts that are hard to find on the open market.
“Right now, we have a huge need for 30-passenger microbuses, and wheelchair buses. The last time we purchases any buses at North Penn was 2015,” he said.
“We have had some buses that have gone to pasture since then, so we are requesting ten new school buses for the 201819 school year,” he said.
Kraynak and Director of Business Administration Steve Skrocki said they’ve calculated a roughly $1 million purchase price for those ten new buses, and said the district would need to purchase roughly 14 new buses per year to bring the fleet average age back down under ten years. Doing so could increase the state subsidy funding North Penn is eligible for, Kraynak said: “if we have newer buses, we get more of that back every year,” and Skrocki said the amount could be “a few thousand dollars per year, per bus.”
If the $1 million in new bus funding for 2018-19 is approved, Kraynak told the board, he would likely seek to buy five or six 30seat microbuses, one or two wheelchair buses, and the rest would be full-size 78-seat buses, depending on the prices found on the market.
Staff have also begun to evaluate the possible benefits and drawbacks of switching from diesel vehicles to propane fuel, which has already been done in the Council Rock and Upper Moreland districts. Doing so would keep the same gas engines, but require a change in fuel injection systems and storage tanks on each bus, plus new fuel tanks and specialized training for staff who would do the refueling.
“There are pros and cons. The pros of this would be that the cost of propane, right now, is about $1.06 a gallon, and that’s about one-third of what we’re paying for diesel fuel,” Kraynak said.
Propane vehicles would be cheaper to maintain, quieter, and cleaner, but each bus would cost between $10,000 and $15,000 more than the diesel equivalent, in addition to a need for at least one propane storage tank, which would cost at least $450,000.
“Right now, we have two diesel tanks at the bus garage, and the bus drivers, whenever they need fuel, they basically just go and fuel up themselves,” he said.
“With propane, you’d need to wear special gloves, special goggles. Propane will instantaneously burn your skin, so we would need to have designated fuelers, rather than have our bus drivers fueling up the buses,” said Kraynak.
Propane buses would also get roughly four miles per gallon, about half of what diesel buses get now, and could have trouble on long trips unless propane fuel stations are already in place.
“They can’t travel long distances, so if we were to do a band trip out to Pittsburgh or Ohio, we wouldn’t be able to send a propane bus. We would need to send a diesel bus, unless we know of some sort of propane fuel station along the way,” he said.
Board member Christian Fusco asked if the savings per gallon would be countered by the lower fuel efficiency, and Kraynak said there would still be savings, but smaller than the sticker price might indicate — and Superintendent Curt Dietrich joked students could calculate the difference as part of their standardized math exams.
“We are looking to see if there’s any possibility of any kind of grant funding. You really need the grant funding initially to make this work — that’s really what it boils down to,” Kraynak said.
Over the past dozen years, North Penn’s transportation costs have stayed roughly steady at approximately $13.5 million per year, and removing salaries and benefits leaves annual expenses at roughly $5 million per year. As a percentage of total district operating expenses, transportation costs have dropped from eight percent in 2009 to roughly six percent today.
“Every year since 2008, through 2016, every year the percentage of the total budget for this department went down,” Kraynak said.
Average operating costs per student are roughly $1,100 per year, well over the roughly $732 per student average statewide, Kraynak said, and that higher cost could be attributed to North Penn’s relatively large number of drivers on staff, as opposed to outsourced to a private company.
How could the department cut costs further? Kraynak said switching from half day to full day kindergarten would save roughly $300,000 per year in bus costs, and eliminating late bus runs at the high school and three middle schools could save an additional $50,000 per year. Overtime costs could also be cut by scheduling field trips based on drivers’ weekly hours, so field trips are spread more evenly instead of given to drivers who would be paid overtime, and shifting more bus runs to private companies as drivers retire or resign.
“It’s a difference of about $25,000 per run, so it’s a significant savings to have a First Student (private) run versus a North Penn run,” Kraynak said.
Earlier this week the school board voted to seek a new contract for those private school runs after the 2018-19 school year, and Skrocki and Kraynak emphasized that new contract would keep the current ratios of private and public runs intact.
“That RFP that was authorized, is only to replicate what we have now, not for the entire operation,” Skrocki said.
Kraynak said of the 142 total vehicles in the fleet, just over 100 are on the roads each day, and Fusco asked if the roughly 30 buses not in service each day was an unusually high number. Kraynak said that difference was accounted for by buses on field trips, being serviced or repaired, and the older ones the district is trying to sell.
“We are trying to get rid of the buses that are not in circulation, the older buses and ones that might need more repairs. We get big dollars: some come in at like $100 a bus,” Skrocki said.
Talks on the 2018-19 budget will continue at future school board meetings, the next of which will be held at 7:30 p.m. on March 6 at the district Educational Services Center, 401 E. Hancock St. For more information or meeting agendas and materials visit www.NPenn.org.
“The average age of our buses at North Penn is 12.6 years old. In terms of school buses, that’s ancient. We have some buses that are as old as 21 years old. They have 1997 chassis on them, and it’s extremely difficult for us to keep up with the maintenance on them.” — Transportation Coordinator Nick Kraynak