Thumbnail photo by Persephone Rose
Del Norte Unified School District is putting four new vans on the road, replacing an aging fleet that drew concerns from parents and staff who said they weren’t safe for students.
But since it will take two or three weeks to be retrofitted to meet the district’s needs, DNUSD is still relying on those older vans, transportation director Chris Armington told the Board of Trustees on Thursday.
Providing an update four months after parents and staff complained of warped brake rotors, leaking brake fluid and school bus seat belts held together with duct tape, Armington said his department had implemented a check-in check-out system for use of the vans.
The transportation department has also altered the maintenance schedule for the vans, he said.
“As of now, we have 45-day schedules for all of our trip vans,” Armington said. “It used to be a 90-day period and now we’re splitting it in half so we’re doing 45-day intervals for making sure these vans are still serviceable.”
The funds to purchase the new vans are coming from the Yurok Tribe and the Klamath Promise Neighborhood Grant, Assistant Superintendent of Business Jeff Napier said.
“They had built transportation into the grant and they told us it would be OK to use that to purchase the vans since they’re being used for student activities.”
In the meantime, Armington is training two new bus drivers and said they’ll likely start driving students in two to three weeks. Two former bus drivers are also returning to DNUSD, he said.
“That will help mitigate having to use outside drivers for transportation so we can use the school buses,” he said, adding that he hopes to be flush with drivers plus substitutes by the following school year. “It’s just going to be safer over all.”
Del Norte is also in the process of selecting a digital work order system, DNUSD Superintendent Jeff Harris said.
At the Board’s Dec. 12 meeting, Armington proposed spending $70,000 on a digital fleet management system — a suggestion some staff rejected noting that Google offers free programs for filling out forms and tracking them. The transportation department currently uses the same written forms it uses for its school buses to record and track maintenance issues with its vans, Armington told trustees.
On Thursday, Harris said the digital work order system DNUSD is in the process of purchasing will be used in all departments, including facilities and maintenance, information technology and transportation.
The tech and facilities and maintenance departments are choosing between two systems, Harris said, adding that they will make a decision “hopefully soon.”
“We would like to have it sooner rather than later because whether it’s a classroom issue or a vehicle issue or a computer issue, whatever it is, we want to be able to track those and know what’s going on,” Harris said. “And we want the person putting in the work order to know where it is [in the process].”
