Um, so that that is >> Yeah, we have we have a very robust blocking. We're just restricted by laws and so something like with coolmathgames.com and that there's nothing in there that allows us to block that and it would be a first amendment violation for us to block it. >> So the use of say um a software that comes in and it only allows the teacher to watch what's on the computer. >> Sure. Yeah. Monitoring software. Yeah. Yep. That's available. >> Absolutely. >> Is that something we currently use right now? We don't currently use it. We've had it in the past and it went unused in classrooms. So we don't we don't haven't used it in a number of years now. >> Okay. Um and so kind of looking into the timeline of one-on-one and continuing that that seems to be a very hot discussion.
Um and you said that Jonathan there was going to be time set aside. What would that look like? Um is that more a call to the public or just encouraging people to share out? Yeah, that's a good question. We were going to start with the committee, but it can be an open meeting committee where um you know people can come and share their opinion. So, we'll uh we need to identify um I asked the principles to start by identifying teachers who wanted to contribute on that committee and then we'll bring in some community members and and we will uh post it and let everybody know when those meetings are. I think that's wonderful especially to include the teachers who it's going to you know drastically affect. Um, I just wanted to know is the lab the only choice or have you considered using like the cows, the computers on wheels where you really reduce the amount especially in K6 where I think most parents probably have the biggest concern >> for sure and um, you know, I find it amazing teachers are amazing people and I think um, we'll be surprised that teachers will come up with great solutions for technology integration in the classroom if we trust start teachers and I know there's a lot of narrative on out there in the media about teachers and stuff, but I think teachers really are amazing people who do care about the kids in our community and do great things and and so I think part of this is allowing the teachers and community to have a discussion and say what is needed to educate our kids and talk together.
And I really do think like I mentioned at the beginning our you know the school district in a small town is the heart of the community but I think having those community voices alongside with the teachers. So to come back to that second part of your question about the carts that is something we've considered. Carts are a little bit harder to maintain because of um you know if there's vandalism to computers and sometimes they don't get plugged in right. And so, yeah, we look at a lab versus carts and and how that would work and th those are discussions we're having behind the scenes about what's the most efficient use of our our funds. >> Thank you. >> Yes. All right. Any other questions, comments, concerns on technology? Going once, going twice. All right. I would like to invite Mr. Bernardino and u Mr. Bosley up to talk about some of our transportation stuff.
And part of the reason Mr. Bosley's coming up is I want to announce that Mr. Bernardino is um his family is going to be moving to Oregon. And so we're very sad that we were going to be losing Justin. And in the meantime, we're um bringing Mr. Bosle on as our interim transportation director. And that's one of our cost-saving measures because it's an out of the classroom position that we're reducing. And so I know at one point in time there used to be one person who was in charge of facilities and transportation. And so Mr. Bosley is going to take that over and we're going to see how it goes and hoping he doesn't get too overwhelmed. But we're going to play it by ear for a little while and see if it's something that we need to um you know. So, in the meantime, we're giving him the interim label.
And so, he's up here with Justin in his last week of working for us to so they can work together on this. Okay. So, our buses are aging pretty rapidly. Our fleet is 23 buses is what we have. There's a lot more on property. We have started scavenging some of the older ones because you can't get parts for them. We pulled steering columns out of some of our 2006 buses to put in other buses. Um, only 12 buses were purchased in 2017 with the bond. We actually got one for free via the Volkswagen settlement. Mr. Rollolof can talk a lot about that because I wasn't I didn't know a lot about that, but he knows a lot about that. Um, two of the buses from 2016, they used to be our White River buses. There was two buses were actually purchased with free and reduced lunch money.
So, we didn't pay anything for those. Um, we do have four buses that were purchased in 2011. We don't use those very well or a lot because they're smaller buses. They were purchased. They're only 77 passengers and that is three full-size adults to a seat. That's how they measure sizes and it doesn't work. I can assure you me, Mr. Rolloff and Bosley are not going to fit in those seats. But that's how they measure the accountability of the seats. We usually only put the buses at two to a seat. Unless they're kindergarteners, then we can't go three, but then they start fighting. And then the rest of it is the other four buses that we have on property that we're running daily are from 2006. The usable lifespan of a school bus is considered 12 to 15 years, about 150,000 miles. um they're getting about 5 miles to the gallon with the 2006s.
The 2011s are getting about 7 to eight. The 2016s, depending on the trip buses, are getting about 8ish. The ones that we're using for route buses, they're getting about six to seven. Um they're, as you can tell, they're sitting pretty high up on the the mileage. the 2006s, almost all four of them that we are running have all had engines replaced to the tune of about $65,000 each time. And then when you replace the engine, it takes out the transmission as well because it finds the next weakest point along the way. So getting new buses, your fuel economy is going to jump to about 10 miles the gallon, which is going to save us a lot of money in fuel. I just filled up my truck and about cried cuz it's just under six bucks a gallon. I got a 26 gallon tank. It's rather expensive.
The taller seats help with accidents. So events of heartbreaking stuff like that, the kids will hit the seat and not the floor. That's why they're designed. They're designed to be taller to be safer. A lot of the bu new buses come with traction control. If the bond passes, all new buses will be ordered. And I've already talked with Mr. Bosley, Mr. roll off. Miss Hoffmeer, Miss Ford, they will all be purchased with automatic chains. So, in the event of a snow day or you get caught in an afternoon snowstorm that we've all been caught in many times, you flip a switch, chains drop below the wheels and it's like a weed whacker head with chains on it and you just drive over them. It's like driving on tire chains on a semi-truck. So, back in 2016, buses were a lot cheaper. So, I got some prices here.
These are just ballpark prices based on the quotes that we got. A non-air conditioning bus, non-storage, is going to cost you about $241,000 for an 84 passenger bus. That would be a route bus, not a trip bus, no storage. That is through Canyon State bus. We also got quotes from RWC. They're comparable. RWC, which is international, no longer offers a rear engine bus. They only offer front engine buses. They get a little bit better fuel economy. They're a little bit more comfort for the driver and the student. You have a little bit more room. They hold 83 passengers. So, you lose one passenger, but you get a lot more comfort for the kids as well. Your special needs buses, the most important kids we have. The bus from 21 has 75,000 miles on it already. The bus that was purchased in the bond in 2017 has 90,000 miles on it.
Those buses do not stop. They pick up kids at 6:00 in the morning. They're done at 8:30. They go back out at 10:00. They come back at 11:45. They're back out again at 1:00. And they don't stop till 5:00. Those buses are run to the ground constantly. Buses are considered like severe duty, like a trash truck. They're not like a semi-truck that runs along the 40. Our white buses because we are being short on drivers. Mr. Kluff, Mr. Grace, they're white bus certified. Mr. Rolloloff's there. Miss Hoffmire's pretty much there. We have a lot of our coaches that are white bus certified. They have they hold 14 passengers. You're not restricted by hours of service like I am with a CDL. They're $128,000. They get about 181 19 miles to the gallon. Xolo's running, I think, a fleet of 15 of them. They send a lot of their trips with them because they're short on drivers, too.
Your trip buses with air conditioning and storage is $276,000. So, the plan is if we pass the bond is to stretch the purchases over the length of the bond instead of doing a one-time purchase so that you don't all your buses don't wear out at the same time. So, you can get build a plan. So after the bond and after you buy all your buses, you take two years off and then you build it into your budget to buy one bus every single year. You rotate your fleet every 20 years and you're keeping up. You know what I mean? As Mr. Rolov says, you're keeping up with the Tahoe. You know, we're not buying the best buses. We're not getting them with USB chargers on them and all that kind of stuff. We're getting just basic what is needed. >> Thank you. And I think buses are similar to when we talked about I know in one of our prior meetings looping back to the discussion on AC units.
I believe the AC units we have on our campus are what six seere and now they are the new manufactured AC units are what like 16 seere. So you know we're saving money and they're more efficient. Same with buses. If you're going, you're replacing buses that get 5 miles per gallon with buses that are safe during safer and get 10 miles per gallon. I mean, our student safety is something you can't put a price tag on, right? And um but the fuel savings in the long run, hopefully that'll be a good thing. So, are there any public comments or questions with transportation? Okay. Um, the next thing is is M. And I just I just wanted to talk briefly about our M. Um, and this is something I've talked about at the last meeting. And this is something we really don't have a grasp on, but we know our our budget in the past, there's been esser funds and a lot more money contributing into our M.
Um, this year we were able to give a basic cost of living raise to our teachers. But when we're talking about a maintenance and operations override, we might not be able to give raises in the future and we actually might have to make cuts in the future if we're unable to pass an override. And so if we look at making cuts, um, taking a step back, u, Miss Hoffmeer presented at the April board meeting of our employee salaries compared to our neighboring districts. And, um, I know Courtney and Mary and I, we have great personalities that want to keep people here, but it's hard to keep people here when our neighboring districts are are paying. um when we're one of the lower paying districts around and that's a hard that's a hard pill to swallow because we think we have amazing people who work for our district and we don't want them um going to any neighboring districts.
Um and many of you probably got the notification this morning that it recruiting you know and it's not just teachers. So, we are we don't even have a full staff of bus drivers. And so, this morning we had to cancel another route because we're short on bus drivers. And bless Justin's heart, he's in there today like working, you know, the pencil to the nub to try to like shift around as routes so we can pick up a lot of the stops just so we can provide transportation to our kids. But if we don't have bus drivers, we can't do those routes. And when other districts pay more um than we pay for bus drivers, it's just a really hard thing. So if we're looking at doing M cuts and we can't pass an override, um that's going to be difficult. So the things that we look at if if we have to make M cuts, first of all, the state only funds half day kindergarten.
We think full day kindergarten is very important and so we fund that from our community. Some school districts have gone who don't have any um M override funds. They go to half day kindergarten um or they'll tuition out offer a tuitioned out option for the afternoon. Kindergarten was not like when I went to kindergarten where we got to color and play and go half day and go home, take a nap, you know. Uh I don't know if I took a nap in kindergarten. I was pretty wired. But um um but now kids are expected to read by the time they leave kindergarten. And um and so the standards are high. You know, if we talk about making cuts, some of our classes with the lowest class sizes are honors classes and AP classes. And we don't want to cut those because we know that a lot of professionals that live up here in the mountain bring their kids to Blige because we have the best education, specifically honors and AP education.
And so we don't have to cut those. We don't want to cut those. Um, and once again, salaries, class sizes, and when we're talking salaries, we're not just talking teacher salaries. We're talking, you know, bus drivers, our facilities people. So, we talk about our facilities people doing so much. And and we're talking about our folks being amazing people that are doing more than less. You know, they're another uh group of those people. Um, positions. So, I know at the board meeting, one of the questions was what positions were cut. um four out of the five positions were outside of classroom positions. So what that means is is some of the support staff that has been able to support teachers in the past. So even though we're not cutting classroom positions, our teachers are going to be, you know, providing more tier 2 support in their class with kids struggling.
Um and so it becomes harder um in that way. Um and just maintenance expenses. So, if we if we're able to pass the bond and a couple years down the road, hopefully our maintenance expenses by getting more efficient units come down a little bit, but if we don't pass a bond and we don't pass an override, we're we we're going to have to put a lot more money into maintenance. And like like Courtney showed with that first set of slides, we've been very efficient. But, you know, that's that's also how we burn people out is trying to consistently ask people to do more with less. And so we would like to provide some of our relief. And so I'm just giving a general thing that these are discussions of cuts that we'll have to make next year if we're unable to um get an override pass to where we can um maintain our budget at least.
>> And I'm sure the the effort has been there to be efficient, but I'm sure the maintenance costs are are high, you know, to keep this stuff going. You know, like we talked about with I mean LEDs, not only are they going to cost about the same, but they're going to lower our electricity bill. >> Yeah. >> As well. So, you know, and there's different things. And coming back to the school facilities project with the pump house, you know, if the water goes out, it's a disruption in school day. It's more expensive to fix it in an emergency. And then you're spending precious M dollars. Um and and in addition to that, you know, we have to have a strong firewall because if we have to endure cyber attacks and be prepared for that and you know, those can be um very expensive things as well.
So there's there's just a lot and we have to be vigilant on all fronts and not having any bond or override money in our district right now and having the state and deferred funding since the 1980s. We're just really making do and and um like I said that that's what leads to burnout. And our our people are amazing people that just keep showing up every day and doing their best. And so I'm going to continue to do the same. I'm going to show up every day and do my best because I don't want to let any of them down. And so, like I said, hopefully we can go with the community and the community can we can be allin together and make Blige the district that we think this community deserves. >> I have a question. If if the district had all of the um maintenance department stuff taken care of and does our budget support our operational expenses outside of that?
I mean, we can't I depend on an override to to fund all the time. >> So, that's Yeah, that's a great question because I think if we were able to get a bond passed a couple years down the road, we would see a couple hundred,000 of um ease in our maintenance and operation funds that we could put back into other um other things. But since we haven't had either in a while, that both are kind of tapped out. So, our capital funds and our maintenance and operation, we we are running very skinny. And I once again I want to give kudos to our budget, our purchasing, our business staff, our facilities, our sites. Our sites are doing as much as they can with the budget we have because there are things I think we need to provide as a school for our kids. We've had community partners make donations and do great things.