Executive committee approves bus sanitation costs

The Evangeline Parish School Board’s Executive Committee voted to approve the cost of sanitizing the school buses against COVID-19 along with extra bus routes if needed during a meeting held Tuesday, August 25.
First Student bussing service worked with the board to find the most cost-effect methods to clean the buses twice a day at a minimum. The cost comes down to $1.14 per bus, per day. For 86 buses, it comes to $98.04. The monthly cost for all busses would be about $1,764, and about $16,000 for nine months.
Committee member Wanda Skinner asked if drivers with double routes would have to sanitize in between routes. School supervisor John Deshotel said they are trying to keep double routes to a minimum, but said there might be a few, and they are asking the drivers to spray in between.
Committee Member Peggy Forman asked First Student supervisor Hubert Mabe how the school board is going to know the buses are sanitized between routes. Mabe said they have a log on every bus that drivers are required to fill out and sign and turn in at the end of each week, saying the busses are sanitized. They will spot-check video recordings to make sure they are being sanitized. After the buses turn off, the cameras can be set to record 15-20 minutes after the key is turned off.
When it comes to extended bus routes, drivers would have to maintain social distancing between students. First Student District Route Manager Will Love said their drivers are guaranteed four hours, so there would be an extra cost of a little over $24 per hour, only when the driver exceeds four hours. Love said he could not see exceeding more than one hour over the guaranteed four. Deshotel said they are trying to avoid extra routes and would only require them when “absolutely necessary.”
Forman asked CFO Amy LaFleur if the cost of sanitizing the buses would come out of the special grants from the CARES Act allocated to school reopeninings. LaFleur said if there would be available funds left in the grant then they could possibly fund a portion of it. However, as it stands now, she did not include that cost because no one told her to put that cost in there and it would have needed to be approved. At the time the grant was written, it was not known the need for bus sanitization was going to fall on the school board.
Forman asked Superintendent Darwan Lazard his opinion in taking money from the General Fund to help pay the bus sanitation expense. She also asked if another grant could be written to cover the cost or if the cost could be covered from an already existing grant.
Lazard said he preferred if they could apply it to an existing grant or look for some other sources to help fund it. “It is definitely important that we have the buses sanitized,” he said. “There’s no question about that. I think the risk and all the negatives that would come as a result of not having the buses sanitized would not be worth the 57 cents per sanitation.” He asked LaFleur to see if they can make it work in the federal funds.
LaFleur said the federal grants allow for sanitations sprays. She also said mental health aid is an assurance of the grant, but as the year goes on, if they have no one who needs use of the mental health aid, she could shift those funds to sanitation. “I have no doubt we’re going to need more sanitation items than we’ll need mental health,” she said. “But only time can tell me that,” she added.
The CARES Act grants have specific requirements of how to spend the money in regards to COVID-19 and were designed to help reopen schools. Categories include sanitation, curriculum, technology, etc. LaFleur reported the grants gave the district $2.835 million in spendable dollars. As of Friday, they had purchased and paid for $723,154.20 and they had open purchase orders with money earmarked for $2.2 million. In the last few days, LaFleur said she also ordered another $9,387.60 for other items that were written into the grant. The remaining money in these funds is $668,136.77, minus items recently ordered.
LaFleur said they have purchased hand sanitizer, gloves, isolation room supplies, thermometers and temperature scanners, cleaning products, and even physical distancing barriers which will be used in Pre-K. Allocations were sent to the schools as the main office collected data on what was needed. “Unfortunately, because each campus is totally different and every teacher has a different scenario and their needs were so very different that there was no way to order in bulk. We allocated to each school and gave principals the authority handle those allocations as they saw fit,” she said. Some of the schools are doing the ordering themselves, and some teachers had already purchased items needed to create physical barriers, so the schools are reimbursing the teachers and the main office is reimbursing the schools. Some of the items purchased by teachers include PVC pipes, zip ties, clear shower curtains, plexiglass barriers, etc.
The committee voted to approve covering the costs of sanitizing the buses while asking LaFleur to find a way to pay for it using the federal grants. The committee approved incurring the cost of extra bus routes using the General Fund, however the district will take special care so that there will only be extra routes when absolutely needed.