LAHARPE — Poor Scott Stanley.
If only he had some good news to report.
As director of transportation for USD 257, Stanley told board members at their meeting Monday night the district’s fleet of school buses is quickly aging.
“Within the next six years, nine of our buses will have reached their 25-year limit,” he said.
The district has nine regular routes and other regular responsibilities such as shuttling elementary students to the SAFE BASE after-school program at Lincoln Elementary four days a week.
Vans and smaller buses transport a handful of students who need special education services in outlying districts, Stanley said, one as far away as Parsons. A current situation also requires a bus to make three separate trips to Chanute each day.
The critical services for these special needs students come at a cost, Stanley said. “I imagine we’ll spend $2,000 a month on fuel to go to the Fairfield Alternative Program in Parsons,” he said.
Burris asked Stanley if there wouldn’t be a savings if the district leased its vehicles from a private business, as is done at the Independence school district.
Stanley said he didn’t know the cost of such a program and worried about its limitations, but that he would pursue the idea.
Summer repair projects totaled $306,404, Stanley said. The biggest project was repairing two sections of the roof to Iola Middle School – “the worst building in the district,” Stanley said. Next summer, another section will be repaired.
Last Friday’s rain leaked through the roof of the Iola High School gymnasium during a volleyball game, he said. Maintenance crews began replacing screws in the ceiling to stem the leaks.
Don Snavely, board member, quipped that replacing the worn out screws will lead to a “perception problem.
“People will wonder what 20-year-old screws are doing in a ‘new’ building,” he said, of the common misconception that Iola schools are relative new.
A developing “ridge” along the floor of the east side of the high school also has Stanley concerned.
The buckled floor is where a previous air chase was laid 50 or so years ago, Stanley said. Several years ago the vent was capped and filled with a material that has since settled, leaving a depression the length of the high school from the teachers’ lounge all the way south to classrooms.
