The Shelby Eastern Schools board approved spending nearly $300,000 on used buses, a new lawnmower and door access upgrades for all five school buildings.

With two owner-operators retiring at the end of the school year, the school system needs to build up its fleet of buses. At Wednesday’s school board meeting, approval was received to purchase six used buses which will help offset the need for new routes and expected retirements in the near future.

Shelby Eastern will purchase four 2011 Thomas HDXs from the Brownsburg school district for $20,000 each. And an additional two 2014 Blue Bird buses will be bought from a Fort Wayne school system downsizing its fleet for $16,000 apiece.

“Originally, we were talking about purchasing one 84-passenger bus which was going to be close to the $200,000 mark,” said Shelby Eastern Schools Director of Transportation and Communication Katrina Falk. “But after looking at the playing field and who we thought would be retiring and what the needs were going to be, we decided that money would be better spent purchasing some gently-used buses.”

“The goal is to get all of our spare buses off the road and not on regular routes,” continued Falk. “So Waldron will have two large spare buses and a special (education) spare bus. Morristown will have two large spare buses and a special (education) spare bus.

“We’re coming into a year where we will have four special (education) routes, where we originally started with two. We are growing. We have so many new preschool students coming in. At Morristown, we had to create an additional town route because we are overloaded between Freeport and the south part of Morristown. It’s a great position for a school district but we are having to ramp up our equipment and staffing. This will be an ongoing discussion as we move on four years from now and we have more contractors retiring. We are trying to get to a good position where we have enough equipment to support corporation-owned routes.”

The board also approved the purchase of a new lawnmower for the Waldron campus. Jeff Scott, Director of Facilities for Shelby Eastern Schools, requested to purchase a larger mower for $15,129.81 that would require less maintenance over its lifespan – an issue the school system has dealt with over recent months with its current smaller mower.

School security being a priority, the board also approved spending $142,819.81 to replace aging door access systems at all four school buildings as well as the administration building.

“The new system is more advanced and user-friendly,” said Scott.

Recent heavy rainfall that caused flooding issues exasperated the need to improve the radio signals to buses extending to the furthest reaches of the Waldron school system.

Scott observed the loss of radio signals to buses traveling south of Geneva. The goal is to stay in communication with all buses, especially when inclement weather is a concern.

The solution is to purchase a repeater that will strengthen radio signals to the south, east and west of the Waldron campus. There are no such issues with radio signals around the Morristown campus.

The cost of the repeater approved for purchase is $12,245.

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