Friday March 29th, 2024 3:33AM

School buses: Prepping the ride

GAINESVILLE – Hall County and Gainesville school officials are busy, sanitizing everything imaginable in preparation for the students’ first physical contact with school property.

And for many youngsters, before they touch their first stairwell banister, locker handle or cafeteria tray, they will spend time “riding the big cheese”.

School buses, that is, replete with flashing lights, sash windows, emergency exits and row-after-row of generally uncomfortable seats.  This will be the first point of contact for many Hall County and Gainesville City youngsters as they head off to their first day of on-campus instruction.

And the individuals who are overseeing the task of assuring “the big cheese” is an environment welcoming to young learners and unwelcoming to hostile pathogens are Adrian Niles and Clay Hobbs.

Niles is Chief Operations Officer for the Gainesville City School System; Hobbs is Director of Transportation for Hall County Schools.

Niles says he expects fifty buses to be in operation on the day school house doors are opened and in-person instruction begins.  “We’re going to hit the ground running the same amount of buses we ran before COVID because we’re running all of our regular routes.”

Hobbs said in a recent interview, “We’ll have around two hundred education routes and we’ll have around fifty five Special Education routes.”

Both men said those numbers likely will be adjusted once administrators get a better picture of how many students plan to use the service on a regular basis.

While both systems feature air-conditioned buses for Special Ed students, open windows and 30-miles per hour will be the way most students deal with warm temperatures during the first weeks of operation.

Hobbs said that is actually a good situation health wise.  “That’s actually one of the steps that we have asked the drivers to insure, that we have as many windows as possible open while we’re transporting because that’s important to the CDC.  The more free-flowing air that you have in an area the less likely COVID transmission takes place.”

But airflow won’t be the only deterrent relied upon to minimize possible virus sharing.  “We’ll have sanitizer available for driver and students,” Niles said.  “And we’ll have disposable masks available for students and drivers, as well.” 

Niles said the use of masks, “…will not be a requirement at this time…but for right now we’re going to make sure they are available.”

Hall County students can expect to find slightly different regulations for riding the buses they use.  “The school system is actually requiring students that ride buses to wear masks or to wear face coverings,” Hobbs said

And the use of onboard hand sanitizer will be mandatory. “We are…expecting the delivery of 325 hand sanitizer dispensers that we’re going to use on the school buses, and ask the students to use as they enter and exit the bus,” Hobbs added.

The practice of “Social Distancing”, Niles and Hobbs agree, will present a unique challenge.

“There are obviously some routes that we are not going to be able to distance,” Hobbs said.

“Those routes that serve high-density neighborhoods…what I have asked the drivers to do is to seat the students as they come from households.  We’re not going to be able to separate students from a 6-feet standpoint, because if we did that we’d only be able to have around ten students per bus,” Hobbs explained.

For Gainesville City the ideal of providing a recommended 6-foot social distance between students won’t happen either.  “That’s going to be the difficult part,” Niles admitted.  “It’s going to be fluid, a work in progress.”

Both school districts say that their drivers will have helpers or staff members on board the bus to aid them and students towards maximum compliance with district policy and to allow the drivers to focus primarily on the safe operation of their vehicle.

Immediately following morning and afternoon routes drivers and other team members will carefully sanitize the interior of the buses.  “All of our buses will be electrostatically treated twice a day,” Niles offered.  (See attached video provided by Gainesville City Schools.)

Hall County Schools plan to sanitize their fleet at least twice a day as well.

Hobbs and Niles say parents and students will be provided with specific information and requirements via the contact information the district has for each student, that information will be available to those attending school open houses, and that each district’s web site will be undated with information pertaining to school bus operation as details are determined.

Click here for Gainesville City Schools.

Click here for Hall County Schools.

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