Duncan Public Schools, Okla., (DPS) is hoping to get voters down to an open house so they can get the information they need about the transportation aspect of the school bond up for vote on May 9.
Haylee Root, Executive Director of Duncan Public Schools Foundation, said the location of the open house went with where most of the questions are coming from -- the buses.
The open house is from 5 to 7 p.m. April 27 at the DPS Bus Barn and Transportation office, which is located on the South end of the Duncan Football Stadium.
"There seems to be a lot of questions surrounding the transportation aspect of the school bond election and we want to give people every opportunity to ask questions, see the need for themselves, visit with bus drivers and staff," Root said. "If they come down to the open house they will have a driver at each vehicle that can answer questions. The drivers are the one who probably know the most about our buses and the conditions and obviously the ones that experience break downs."
The DPS Transportation staff wanted to be open to the voters.
"They just want to be very open and transparent about the need and let people know that this is a real need and not just a 'want' -- this is a big need. They just want to show everyone kind of what's going on down," she said. "It's important for people to know the number one fact is that 45 percent of our students are riding the bus everyday so we have a big need to fill and we have to have reliable transportation for those kids."
It's not just route buses; it's activity buses, vans and Suburbans which get used to transport students for various functions like sports and field trips.
Leeann Arredondo, the director of Transportation for DPS, put together data for people to see the fleet of buses in a snap shot.
"During the last count in March she (Arredondo) wanted the public to know that 13 buses are out of service and what that means for our fleet is it's causing routes to have to double," Root said. "This means longer waiting times for students and cancellation of activity trips that can be put as a lower priority. Some of our kids are missing out on going on educational opportunities because we just don't have the extra buses to provide them."
Root even she didn't realize what double routing really meant for students until Arredondo explained it.
"There are kids for instance, when they get picked up from school to go home there is actually a group of kids that are having to wait until that bus completes its route," she said. "Then it picks them up and takes them home. So there are kids having to wait on a complete bus delivery before they either get delivered to school or home from school. That's unacceptable, our kids shouldn't have to be delayed in getting home or to school."
The bond might be the only way for the buses to be replaced right now, according to Root.
"If the bonds doesn't pass, the school doesn't have the budget to replace them," she said. "It's not just like this was a desire. If the bond doesn't pass we simply can not replace the buses and the problem will get worse. The oldest bus in the fleet is from 1994 with an excess of a 123,000 miles on it. The majority of our buses are from between 2006 and 2010 models."
In the 2015-2016 school year the combined activity and route mileage was 400,840 according to Arredondo.
