Published: June 29, 2009 09:43 am      

Corbin Primary gets own buses

By Samantha Swindler / Managing Editor

Next year’s Corbin Primary students will have bus routes separate from the rest of the school district and adult monitors on every bus.

The Corbin Board of Education approved the long-discussed transportation change during its Thursday board meeting.

Primary students currently ride on buses that also serve students at Corbin elementary, intermediate and middle schools. With the change, primary students will have separate bus routes, and each bus will have a teacher’s aide on board.

Superintendent Ed McNeel said the change will cost the district approximately $80,000 to $90,000 in the first year and would require four more bus drivers and five teacher’s aides.

The school receives reimbursements from the state based on ridership numbers from the prior year. That means the district hopes to break even on its costs in the 2010-11 school year, if more students start riding buses in the 2009-10 school year.

“That is the hope, we hope to do that, but I don’t have a crystal ball,” McNeel said.

The change means most primary students will be on buses for a shorter amount of time. It also means the ride for third through eighth grade students will be cut by about 20 minutes, McNeel said, since those buses will no longer be driving out to Corbin Primary to pick up students.

“Almost all the children will be on the buses a shorter amount of time,” he said. “It depends on the routes and so-forth... but also, the big thing was, you’ll have young children all on the same bus with a monitor. That’s critical ... we feel it will be safer.”

School board members hope the changes will make parents more likely to send their children to school on the bus.

McNeel said fewer parents dropping off and picking up children will also help with traffic concerns at the primary school.

On Thursday, the board also accepted bids for site work on the expansion project at Corbin High School. The district awarded Elza Construction a $470,000 project for site readiness, Kay & Kay Contracting a $468,500 project for asphalt work, and Landmark Sprinkler a $52,470 project for sprinklers. In total, bids came in about $9,000 under budget, the board was told.

The $10.8 million expansion project will add two wings to the high school to house math and science classes, a band and choral room, a lobby for the school theater, administrative offices and a new main entrance. The project is tentatively set to be “substantially complete” by September 2010. McNeel said he hopes to bid the actual construction of the building by August.

In other business, the board:

• approved a bid from Croley Metal Buildings in Williamsburg to construct a $61,760 district technology building with storage, pending KDE approval

• approved revised BG-1 forms, which equate available revenue for a project to its estimated cost, for a metal storage building a Corbin High School, a heating and air conditioning project at the high school, and a roof project at Corbin Elementary

• approved a bid for fencing at the Corbin Primary soccer field

• accepted a $940 bid for two surplus school buses from Billy Rains

• accepted a $100,000 Even Start family literacy grant