County to purchase 15 air conditioned school buses
BY PAM BRANNON Gulf Breeze News news@gulfbreezenews.com

More Santa Rosa County School buses will be air conditioned next year. The school board approved the purchase of 10 new bus air conditioners at their school board meeting last week. There will also be five new special needs buses added to the fleet this summer.

The school district's transportation director Joey Harrell said, "We are trying to get all the ESE (special needs) buses air conditioned first. We have 30 special needs buses in our fleet, and with these five new buses and some of these air conditioners approved today, we will only have three of those buses not air conditioned next year. And we are not air conditioning those because next year they are scheduled to be replaced by five more new special needs buses. So by the end of the school year next year all our 30 special needs buses will have air conditioning."

School Board member Diane Coleman of Navarre asked how many of the regular buses are air conditioned. Harrell said 60 of the regular student buses are air conditioned right now, and they are working on getting more of those changed over, also.

The district runs 250 buses each day, with most of those buses running two or three routes each morning and again each afternoon.

School Board member Ed Gray III of Gulf Breeze said, "I know you would be disappointed if I didn't bring this issue up - since I always do. But has there been any more progress made on consolidating bus stops? We need to consolidate bus stops, and there would be less time on the buses for everyone from drivers to students." Gray and Coleman said they think bus stops should be consolidated before school begins next year, so parents get used to the idea from the beginning of the year.

Harrell said they had not done work on that part of the route scheduling yet, because they had been working on new routes and new buses being added, and other areas of the routing problems.