$1.76 Million for School Transportation Optimization

Twenty school districts across Southeastern and Eastern Ohio are receiving a 5 year grant from the Ohio Department of Education’s Straight A Fund.

According to Noble Local Schools Superintendent, Dan Leffingwell, the $1.76 million grant will allow a cross-district consortium to analyze and optimize transportation efficiencies across the districts and create a projected savings of $4 million from the general fund.

Currently, as a consortium, the school districts are averaging more than 29,500 miles per day with 448 buses. Meaning, the buses are traveling around the world each day (24,902 miles), and then some. With the help of this grant if the consortium is ably to simply save one mile per bus per day there is the potential to save $45,000 in a single school year.

According to Leffingwell, progress is already being made as GPS systems have been installed in the more than 450 buses. The systems will track routs, idle time and help determine if any routes overlap among other data points.

Leffingwell says there is also a safety component to the project, “The second part of it is that is actually going to be an RFID system, a z-pass system that actually tracks when a kid gets on or when a kid gets off the bus.”

Now that these technologies have been installed, Leffingwell says they can begin familiarizing them-selves with how to access and analyze the data.

Leffingwell feels this optimization of transportation is important because buses are only a supporting part of their business.

“The general fund supports everything that goes on in the school district. What we’re really trying to do is squeeze the most efficiencies out of one part of our operation to free up more dollars to put in classrooms and increase and enhance the opportunities for students. Because that is our primary business.”

The school 20 districts include:

Barnesville EVSD
Bellaire LSD
Bridgeport EVSD
Buckeye Local School District
Cadwell EVSD
Cambridge CSD
East Guernsey LSD
Harrison Hills CSD
Indian Creek LSD
Martins Ferry CSD
Noble Local School District
Norther Local School District
Rolling Hills LSD
Shadyside LSD
St. Clairsville-Richland CSD
Stuebenville CSD
Switzerland of Ohio LSD
Toronto CSD
Union Local School District