April 3, 2019

Contract bus service in school’s future?

Contract bus service in school’s future?

By Neal A. Shipman
Farmer Editor

Four months after the McKenzie County Public School District No. 1 entered into a contract with Harlow’s School Bus Service, a private bus company, to provide drivers for its activity busses, the school board is now contemplating using the company for all of its bussing needs.
“This is something that we have been looking at for at least four months,” states Steve Holen, district superintendent.
According to Holen as enrollment has topped over 1,800 students with over 1,200 students riding busses every day, providing transportation services is becoming a bigger and bigger issue.
“We are having trouble recruiting, training and retaining bus drivers,” states Holen. “Our district currently has 25 different bus routes and as our enrollment continues to grow, we expect more students riding the bus and we’ll be needing to add more bus routes.”
By contracting bussing services with a professional bus company, such as Harlow’s that already provides service to several other school districts including Mandan and Dickinson, Holen and the school board believe that there are advantages to considering the option.
“The biggest advantage with contracting is that Harlow’s would be responsible for ensuring that they have drivers available for every bus route,” states Holen. “Harlow’s is a professional organization and they can provide more services than we can.”

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