Central Greene, J-M, Carmichaels mull shared transportation
Garrett Neese
Three Greene County school districts will investigate whether it makes sense to combine their transportation resources.
The Central Greene School District Board of Education voted Tuesday night to put out a request for proposals for a joint transportation agreement with Jefferson-Morgan School District and Carmichaels Area School District.
If all three districts approved the proposal, the agreement would start next fall and run through the 2030-31 school year.
Central Greene Superintendent Matthew Blair said the district is always looking for ways to make things more efficient.
“People talk about consolidation and how that’s going to be the way to correct things, and that’s not necessarily always true,” he said. “A lot of times it’s through shared services.”
The idea came out of regular meetings the superintendents of the five Greene County districts have to discuss problems and issues, Blair said.
“When we found out the three of us were going to come due for transportation all at the same time, we thought, ‘Well, hey, that’d be a good time to at least explore it,” he said. “And we left ourselves enough time, should it not work, we can go out individually for RFPs like we normally would.”
Over the past several months, a joint transportation committee has met including each district’s superintendent, business manager and three board members, said Jefferson-Morgan Superintendent Brandon Robinson.
The bigger pool of routes might attract more large national companies, such as First Student, which Jefferson-Morgan is using now, Robinson said.
The move could allow the districts to create a shared transportation hub, as well as possibly sharing mechanics or drivers for things like extracurricular athletic programs.
“And then we’ll also look at hopefully sharing some of our out-of-district runs, whether that be doing special needs school or some of our alternative ed schools,” he said.
Jefferson-Morgan approved putting out a request Monday night. The Carmichaels board is scheduled to vote on the resolution at its Thursday meeting.
While Carmichaels is happy with its current contractor, Student Transportation of America, the district is looking to see if the three districts partnering with one company would be cost-effective, said Superintendent Amy Todd.
Until proposals come in, the districts have no estimates for much they could save through shared services.
“It could save money,” Todd said. “It could cost money. We’re not really sure.”
In evaluating whether a joint agreement makes sense, superintendents said they would look at pricing and whether the vendor would have enough buses and drivers to meet the district’s curricular and extracurricular needs.
“I would look at the company as well to see — are they brand new? Are they going to be able to do it?” Todd said. “And look at their audit to see how they operate.”
Preliminary plans call for the joint request for proposals to be released by September, with bids opening in October, according to a timeline included with Jefferson-Morgan’s resolution.
The three districts’ business managers will develop a final timeline once all three boards have approved the resolution, Robinson said.
If the districts don’t receive any suitable proposals, they will continue with issuing individual RFPs in January.
“If we’re all on our own, we would probably post those around January normally,” Robinson said. “So it gives us enough time to look at those numbers.”