Five school buses sit idle in the Boerne Independent School District’s transportation depot, waiting to be shipped out and fitted with onboard air conditioning units.
In their place roll five AC-equipped buses on loan from the Hays Consolidated School District.
Hays CISD arranged for Boerne ISD to borrow five air-conditioned buses for one to two months until BISD completes the refurbishment of non-air-conditioned buses.
The district borrowed six air-conditioned buses from an anonymous donor-district the previous week to transport students, but that pact only lasted one week.
Bryan Benway, district director of communications, said the pact with Hays gives the district up to two months to get its own AC-equipped units back in service.
John Ramirez, Boerne ISD director of transportation, said the agreement came about quickly, “The first call was Wednesday (Aug. 16). Thursday, they had discussion, and Friday they delivered,” Ramirez said.
Ramirez said the district trimmed the need from six to five after assessing the prior week’s service.
“Five is what we needed to make sure we covered the two routes that were not AC (buses), and to have backups in case something goes down,” he said.
“We want to focus on the extraordinary effort that this took,” Benway said. “We’ve never done this before, so we really want to thank Hays CISD Superintendent, Dr. Eric Wright, and its transportation team, for their kindness and for their support of the safety of our children.”
BISD runs 48 buses on routes each morning and afternoon.
“Some buses roll out as early as 5:45 a.m., to reach children who live near the edge of the district,” Ramirez said. “We like to have all the students delivered to the elementary schools by 7 a.m. Then they turn around and go for all the secondary, middle school and high school students.”
Funding for the borrowed buses and the AC conversion has not been finalized. The district is still in the process of finding a firm to install the AC units.
“We’re still going through the process of making sure we get the right value for the money that we are going to spend on that,” Ramirez said. “The big challenge … is there’s a delay in getting parts, everywhere. So, we don’t have a timeline yet.”
Meanwhile, the five non-AC-equipped buses remain at the BISD bus depot, out of service, until a contractor is chosen. “It takes a couple weeks to get it all scheduled. We plan on getting that all finalized very soon,” Ramirez added.
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