Riding the bus to and from Oxford Schools just got a little safer.
At the Dec. 10 Board of Education meeting at Oxford High School, board members voted unanimously to approve the purchase of five new buses for the school district.
The purchase, totaling $427,760 through Midwest Transit will come from the district’s 2019-2020 general fund. Ann Weeden, director of transportation for Oxford Community Schools plans on purchasing three 65-passenger buses and two 71-passenger buses, all of which will run on gasoline.
“We are going to order pretty much the same setup we ordered last year when we received the 12 fullsized buses,” Weeden said. While 14 buses were purchased last year, two of them were orthopedic.
Instead of adding to the fleet, these buses will replace some of the older buses from the 2002 and 2003 model years. Some have been in service for 18 years those buses, Weeden says, could be a cause for concern.
“Even after we replaced the 14 buses last year, we have half a fleet of very new buses and still have a substantial size of our fleet that are very old diesel buses that are anywhere from 2001, 2002 to 2007 model years,” she said. “Even though the motors may run great and my technicians keep them on the roads every day and keep them driving, they’re just like your vehicle you keep at home: rust creeps in … you lose that integrity and the safety for the children. That’s what we’re looking at is that we need to replace and just continue to replace these older buses with newer ones.”
Weeden is hopeful that the district will be receiving the new buses this coming spring.