School board members heard an update this week on the district transportation department’s budget for 2024-25, including another round of propane-fueled school buses that could be on the way.
"We are currently at 83 percent of the daily runs, on the road every day, are propane-powered. With those eight more coming, that means we’ll be at 89 percent, for the 24-25 schoolyear,” said Coordinator of Transportation Dennis Ryan.
"We continue to strive to get 100 percent of those bus routes, to eventually be propane powered,” he said.
Starting in 2018 the district has steadily converted their fleet of diesel school buses to propane, the first of which arrived in the district in May 2019, while allocating $1 million in the transportation department’s budget each year to purchase more propane buses.
Grant funding in 2020 went into another round of propane buses, bringing the district’s total at that time to 21, all fueled from a propane station adjacent to North Penn High School. Nine more buses were added to the fleet in 2021, an approval from the school board in June 2022 authorized conversion of the buses used by private firm First Student for district runs to propane, and in fall 2022 the district secured grant funding for seven more propane buses, before adding another eight propane buses in May 2023.
On Tuesday night, Ryan outlined his department’s plans for 2024-25, in the latest in a series of departmental budget presentations to the finance committee ahead of a draft budget adoption in May and final vote in June.
Currently, Ryan told the committee, the district owns a total of 119 vehicles, covering 68 bus routes and 18 van routes, transporting 11,340 public school students per day, while contracting with private firms for an additional 34 vehicles to transport just over 1,500 non-public students each day. In 2022-23, district vehicles drove just under 1.2 million total miles, and the contracted vehicles went just over 830,000 total miles, adding up to a total of just over two million miles driven during that school year.
"In recent years, we’ve been transitioning the fleet to propane, which means as the fleet has been transitioning, there has been more of a need for propane fuel, compared to diesel,” Ryan said.
So far for 2023-24, the district has consumed 320,000 gallons of propane, 100,000 gallons of diesel fuel and 40,000 gallons of gasoline, Ryan said, before breaking down the costs of those fuel types and the numbers of vehicles in each category. The district currently operates 46 propane school buses, with eight more on order to arrive before July 1, and the 2024-25 department budget includes an additional $1 million to buy eight more during that schoolyear.
"Forty-seven percent of the district-owned bus fleet, including spares, are on propane; that will be approximately 56 percent in 2024-25,” Ryan said. Counting only district-owned vehicles that run daily to pick up students brings the percentage to 67 percent, and adding in the 100 percent propane fleet of private carrier First Student brings the total up to 83 percent propane of buses on the road every day,
"What it all boils down to is, how many routes are on the road every day, delivering students? And they’re on the clean energy buses: we’re going to be at 89 percent come next year, which is a great thing,” Ryan said.
"It’s a big savings on fuel and maintenance as well, so we’re looking to continue to make that transition,” he said.
Specifics on those savings: the district currently buys propane at $1.18 per gallon, and an alternative fuel tax deduction cuts 37 cents per gallon from that price, yielding a net actual price of just 81 cents per gallon, well below the roughly $3.50 per gallon the district pays for diesel fuel. The propane cost is projected to dip slightly for 2024-25, Ryan told the committee, but the supply contract for propane expires after that schoolyear, meaning it may be time to shop around.
"We are going to have to look to potential negotiate an extension with our current provider, or go out to an RFP again to get prices,” he said, and a joint bid with other districts could be an option.
"With a year left on the contract, we’ll have that conversation by next year,” he said.
Staff and the board have recently discussed the contracted bus runs, and a recent RFP for such a firm yielded considerably higher prices than under the current contract, so staff recommended and the board approved a two-year extension of the current contract with hauler First Student. Over time, Ryan said, staff could bring more of those bus runs in-house, using district buses and drivers instead of contracted ones, and doing so could yield savings: the 2024-25 projected cost of in-house bus runs will be $408 per day, above the 2023-24 contracted cost of $367 per day but below the contracted cost for 2024-25 of $417 per day.
"You can see, there’s about a $30 difference, per day, per bus. But with those proposals we received, even with the extension, we figured out that by next year, it’s actually going to be cheaper to operate in-house, compared to contracted. If we bring in more runs in house, we would need drivers,” he said, and a corresponding increase in the department’s budget to recruit and retain those drivers.
Staff and the board have also held lengthy talks in recent months about moving the transportation center — a maintenance garage, dispatch office, propane tank and fuel station, and parking for district-owned school buses — off of the campus of North Penn High School ahead of major renovations there, and to a site elsewhere in the district, with a location on Church Road in Upper Gwynedd named as a possibility by officials in that township. Moving to that new location could allow more flexibility in bidding out a private bus contract after the two-year extension, Ryan said, since the new site could have parking for that company’s bus fleet in addition to those owned by North Penn.
"By two years from now, we’re hoping that we’re in a new facility, and we believe that after those two years are up, we can go out to RFP and get a more competitive process,” he said.
District CFO Steve Skrocki added that one contractor that submitted a proposal for the private bus runs would have been driving those buses to and from Philadelphia beforehand, and said having extra space within the district could be "a game-changer” for the next contract.
"If we are able to provide enough space for a contractor, we can lease that space to the contractor, or we can just ask them to offset the daily rate. I think this sets us up well in the future,” Skrocki said.
Ryan then showed a series of charts depicting the transportation department’s costs compared to other districts, as a share of the overall district budget, and broken down by cost per student, all largely level or down slightly compared to prior years. Total staffing levels for 2024-25 include three fulltime routing specialists, one trip coordinator, one dispatcher, one secretary, four fulltime mechanics, and one lead mechanic, and the district currently staffs a total of 68 in-house bus drivers, 17 van drivers, 27 bus assistants, and 21 substitutes, with zero permanent vacancies: "North Penn has been lucky enough to not have to deal with that shortage,” Ryan said.
Staff are also working to prepare "Bus Patrol,” a system of cameras mounted on buses that capture photos and video of drivers who pass buses with their stop lights on while dropping off kids, with proceeds from tickets going toward the cost of the cameras. With local municipalities now signing off on the necessary agreements, installation of that equipment should begin in April, Ryan told the committee, and the department and district will publicize info to the public before it goes live.
Board member Cathy McMurtrie asked how many buses the $1 million allocation would cover, and Ryan said eight; she then asked if staff saw any efficiencies if that amount was increased.
"Is there any type of cost-benefit analysis, to say we should accelerate that? And add additional dollars to bring in ten next time?” she said.
Ryan answered that staff have had those talks in-house, and "We’re pretty close to where we need to be,” with close to 100 percent of routes projected to be converted to propane by the end of the 2025-26 schoolyear. Skrocki added that the new propane buses have brought down the fleet’s average age from over 14 years prior to the propane purchases, "down to ten-point-something” years old now, and any year-end budget surplus could be used to buy buses or vans too.
"When we started this, we had some buses that were well over 200,000 miles, that were 20-plus years old. We’ve divested ourselves from those buses now, and we’re all really proud of our fleet now,” Skrocki said.
McMurtrie then asked if staff had considered partnering with the adjacent North Montco Technical Career Center to train high school-age students in bus maintenance, and Ryan said staff have had early talks on doing so, plus one newly hired mechanic graduated from North Montco and its programs. The board member then asked for specifics on the maintenances costs and savings for diesel against propane, and Ryan said the savings are significant, with an oil change on a diesel bus using about ten times more oil than a propane bus.
Board President Tina Stoll asked how often each propane bus refills, how often the propane fuel tank adjacent to the high school gets refilled now, and if adding more propane buses would mean more tank refills would be needed. Ryan answered that the typical propane bus refills every other day, the tank is refilled once a week, and adding tank capacity is "a discussion we’re definitely going to be having.”
"Maybe looking at a bigger tank, so that we don’t need to have a delivery be made every three days or four days, once the buses are fully propane. It’s definitely a discussion we’re going to be having in the future,” Ryan said.
North Penn’s school board next meets at 7 p.m. on March 21 and April 8 at the district Educational Services Center, 401 E. Hancock Street, and the finance committee next meets at 6 p.m. on April 8. For more information visit www.NPenn.org.
This article appears courtesy of a content share agreement between North Penn Now and The Reporter. To read more stories like this, visit www.thereporteronline.com.
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