School van contract approved
Starting next month, a fleet of vans will be used to transport more than 100 Anne Arundel County school students with special needs to nonpublic schools. This move frees up 24 drivers to provide bus service to 2,600 general education students, many of whom previously have gone without a way to school.
The county Board of Education approved a contract with five bus vendors at its Wednesday meeting, clearing the way for the van program to start. It authorized the use of up to $1.9 million to pay five vendors to provide up to 31 vans. The program will launch with 24 vans because that is the number available right now through vendors, Anne Arundel County Public Schools spokesman Bob Mosier said. The system plans to add vans during the school year as more drivers are hired and vans are bought by vendors.
The agreement runs through the end of June.
“We are still determining the exact routes but the plan is to address some general and magnet routes in the Annapolis, Broadneck, North County and Old Mill clusters and to fix all of the no-service issues in the Meade cluster,” Superintendent Mark Bedell said Wednesday at the board meeting.
Families gaining service will be notified by the week of Nov. 28, the school system said in a news release.
When Anne Arundel County Public Schools cannot meet the needs of a student with physical, emotional or mental disabilities, that student is placed into a nonpublic school, such as the Sheppard Pratt School, The Harbour School and High Road School. Until now, the system has used traditional school buses to transport these students to nonpublic schools.
This year the General Assembly approved the use of vans to transport students, and Bedell said the system will pursue the use of contracted vans and eventually through a fleet owned by the school system.
Bedell said 21 contracted vans will start running on Dec. 5, and another three will start Dec. 12.
Thousands of students have been without bus service since that start of the 2021-22 school year, as contractors have struggled to fill positions. A shortage of school bus drivers, caused by employment compe
tition and other factors, is occurring around the country.
As of Nov. 16, there are 67 bus driver vacancies out of 585 contracted routes. There were 44 routes with no service listed on the school system’s website Thursday afternoon and 11 with morning service only.
The school system posted a solicitation this month seeking bids to provide van service for the next five school years.
The system seeks 40 vans from contractors to serve 16 route groups around the county through the 20292030 school year, with the option of two one-year extensions.
Bids are due in December. During the next five years the system hopes to make bidding requests for between 25 and 30 additional vans.
The system hopes to eventually build its own fleet of vans to transport students to nonpublic schools, as well as to transport homeless students to their school of origin.
That would mean buying alternative vehicles and hiring drivers directly, rather than using contractors.