The Perry County District No. 32 Board of Education discussed and approved several important matters at the latest board meeting on Oct. 11.
The lengthiest discussion was about the school bus routes. The routes were approved by the board, but did not change too much and were based on discussions that were had last November. “There might have been a couple of county roads that were left out or I didn’t specify some of the stop locations,” said Transportation Director Sarah Orf.
Orf said that the transportation department is adequately staffed at the moment, as they have diligently worked to fill positions, especially bus drivers.
“We are where we need to be right now, but we always need subs,” Orf said. “There have been a couple of drivers interested in helping out with trips.”
Town routes are getting full and is an ongoing discussion within the department. Most of those buses that travel in town have approximately 60 students on board.
“To be able to add routes back we would need to be able to make sure we had an adequate number of subs,” Orf said. “The thing we don’t want to do is add routes and then have to take them away again.”
The emergency route (also known as snow routes) process did not change either. The emergency plan was officially adopted The plan will put a school bus within five miles of most of the patrons. We must rely on parents to get their children to school or to and from the emergency bus routes. If the bus connection is some distance from a child’s home, the district must rely on parents to plan with neighbors and friends for a place where the child can wait for the bus in the morning and get off in the afternoon. Even this plan cannot work immediately after a major storm such as snow, flooding. If the emergency bus routes are to be used, this would be announced over normal news release channels. Board member Glendon Sattler asked several questions about when the district will use the special routes.
“There’s a lot that goes into it,” Orf said. “There may be a certain part of the county that didn’t get hardly anything and those roads are very clear. The other half of the county may be bad. Sometimes those emergency routes don’t work for all of our roads. Also the sidewalks may not be clean and the streets are. We didn’t use them for snow, but we did use them for flooding.”
The emergency routes are posted on the district website under the transportation tab and be handed out to parents approximately Nov. 1.
The board also approved the sub nurse pay which went up to $25.11per hour for RNs and $23.59 for LPN. Assistant Superintendent Craig Hayden said that the new higher wages should be more competitive with surrounding districts.
In other news, Nancy Voelker and Dominic Blythe were selected for the John Belcher Schloarship Committee.
In Dr. Fara Jones’ report, MAP and EOC scores were discussed as well as the financial and attendance reports.
