The Macomb School District has completed the first year of running its own transportation system.
“I’m extremely happy with it,” said Superintendent Patrick Twomey.
The district had contracted out transportation for 30 years, most recently with Durham School Services.
Twomey said Durham constantly battled driver shortages, but the school district’s Director of Operations/Transportation Director Scott Schauble and Transportation Manager Melissa Peterson came up with creative solutions to meet that challenge.
“Now when we hire custodians, we hire custodians/bus drivers. It’s a joint job,” Twomey said.
In addition, several other employees earned their commercial driver’s license for after-school bus trips so that the district did not need to take a regular driver off their route.
“That’s had a tremendous impact as well,” Twomey said.
He said the district did a good job of getting students to school and back home on-time.
Peterson told the board of education that the transportation department is fully staffed.
She said the department’s goals for next school year include:
- Maintaining the capacity of the employee pool
- Continuing to come up with ways to improve the bus environments
- Providing training in deescalating skills for drivers and monitors
- Improving the training systems for new employees
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