School district sticks with Kobussen

The Shawano School Board decided May 1 to keep Kobussen Buses as its transportation vendor, and it will also keep the school start and finish times the same.

Superintendent Kurt Krizan told the board that keeping Kobussen would mean the cost to the district would be $319 per day per bus for standard bus runs. If the district had hired Lamers, the cost would be $384 per day per bus.

“When we did the calculation per day, Kobussen’s cost came in lower, even when you include fuel,” Krizan said. “Kobussen is proposing 17 buses, while Lamers is proposing 20.”

The annual costs for the regular bus runs, which would run 173 days out of the year, would be $938,179 for Kobussen and well over $1.3 million with Lamers. That would not include extra busing for field trips, sports and other extracurriculars. The contract with Kobussen will be for five years, whereas Lamers had been seeking to lock in a deal for seven years.

“The five-year contract fits more into how we’ve traditionally done this and been able to reevaluate in a five-year process,” Krizan said.

Another factor that kept the district from choosing Lamers, according to Krizan, is that the company added to its contract a 3-5% increase annually for fuel costs, even if fuel prices were to drop.

Krizan said he surveyed staff, students and families to determine if the school start and finish times should change, as Lamers had suggested that going to double runs each day instead of a single run would save money. The current start times are 8 a.m. for the secondary schools and 8:20 a.m. for the elementary schools. If the district had gone with the double run option, it would need to start the secondary schools at 7:30 a.m. and the elementary schools at 8:50 a.m.

From the 185 staff responses to the survey, 58.9% wanted to keep the daily schedule the same. Families also had a similar response, with 75.6% of 509 responses wanting no change.

Interestingly, 57.9% of the 271 high school student responses to the survey wanted to change the schedule, differing from the adults. The current school schedules were put into place in 2018 after the board at the time heard scientific evidence showing older students functioned better in school with a later start time.

Board member Jeana Winslow questioned why the start times under the proposed switch were so far apart.

“I thought they said that there only needed to be 40 minutes between those buses (on double routes),” Winslow said.

Krizan said the minimum needed was actually 50 minutes with an hour preferred. He said the scheduled start times were far apart because elementary school students are not in school as long each day, and the district wanted to make the end times work out — 3 p.m. for secondary schools and 3:50 p.m. for elementary schools — so the younger children who couldn’t be in daycare would not be home alone.

lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com