After months of busing struggles, Fresno Unified spends $1.2 million on new school buses
Fresno Unified will soon add five new school buses to its fleet.
The new vehicles will come with air-conditioning to face down the brutal central San Joaquin Valley summer heat. The district will retire some of its older, non-air-conditioned buses to serve only as backups.
Right now, a little under half of the district’s buses – 48 of 106 total – have A/C, district spokesperson Nikki Henry told The Bee’s Education Lab over email.
The district also contracts with another vendor, First Student, to bus some students with special needs. All of those hired vehicles have A/C, Henry added.
The school board voted unanimously on Wednesday to purchase the five new buses for roughly $1.2 million from provider A-Z Bus Sales out of Colton.
The new buses will run on diesel, unlike most of FUSD’s fleet, which uses compressed natural gas, according to a staff report.
The move comes in the wake of especially pronounced challenges with transportation this school year.
Hundreds of students were arriving two to 30 minutes late to class every day at Computech Middle School, a STEM magnet school of roughly 800 students in southwest Fresno, for months before the district adjusted routes in early February.
Students with special needs, some of whom are bused by the district’s outside vendor First Student, have also been arriving late and getting picked up from school late this year, according to special education teachers who spoke with The Bee’s Education Lab.
Anything from bus driver shortages to updated school start times were causing the delays.
Despite the A/C available on First Student buses during last year’s heatwave around Labor Day weekend, the district’s Addicott Elementary – which serves medically fragile students with severe disabilities – released students early on two of the hottest days over that period. District officials at the time said the decision was made out of an abundance of caution regarding “heat on school buses for their medically fragile students.”
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