School buses roll next week

By Scott Marshall


Published: August 13, 2008

Dozens of Amherst County school buses soon will beckon this year’s students for their daily trips to and from classes.

The bus fleet logged more than 1.1 million miles over 475 square miles last year, hauling some 3,700 of the county’s nearly 4,700 students to seven elementary and two middle schools and the high school.

Click here for a list of bus routes

The school system paid $571,853 to run the buses last year; $556,216 is budgeted for the 2008-09 school year, said Amherst County School Superintendent Brian Ratliff.

To accomplish this year’s student commute, the system will have 61 buses to cover about 115 routes, said Transportation Supervisor Randy Tschetter.

Despite the their planning, school officials ask that students and parents be flexible –– routes can and will change.

“As mobile as our society is and how much people move, you’re constantly deleting and adding stops, it’s fluid,” said Tschetter, a 30-year-plus education veteran in his second year as bus boss, among other things.

Service, namely accurate information for families, is everything, he said. “We work really hard at it.”

The school system sent more than 1,000 letters to parents that have their students’ bus number, stop location, the time and a few of the bus rules, Tschetter said.

For instance, elementary school students must have an adult or older sibling to put them onto the bus in the morning and meet them in the afternoon. Tschetter gently reminds potential freedom fighters: “Riding the bus is a privilege.”

At the schools’ Thursday open houses from 1 to 7 p.m., parents and students can visit a bus table and talk with a driver whose routes service a particular school.

Each school by now has received an alphabetized list of students; the number of the bus they can ride; and the route and stop times and locations, Tschetter said.

Finally, school buses are safer than other modes of transportation, Tschetter said. Nationally, 25 million students ride a school bus daily, with a yearly average of five fatalities, compared to 800 fatalities among those who drive, walk or ride bikes, Tschetter said.

Last year, Amherst County buses were involved in three accidents involving significant vehicle damage.