001Welcome everyone. >> To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Church to approve the agenda. >> All in favor? >> Oh, excuse me. Can I have a second? >> All in favor? >> I car. Next on the agenda, Dr. schooling and uh will provide us efficiency study and transportation. >> Yes. Thank you, President Long members of the board, Superintendent Saxs. I I am here with Dr. Skooly, Derek Grant, and Spencer Jenko from Law. We want to tonight is a basically we're almost complete with what we're going to do. Um there's a couple final things we have to do, but um Spencer has a a PowerPoint for you. I'm gonna go ahead and let him
002talk and then we can discuss >> Spencer is >> Spencer. Y >> I know. >> He's the third one. >> Spencer Jen. >> All right. Good evening. Can everybody hear me? >> Yes. >> Excellent. Uh, is the presentation on the board yet or uh are we just talking right now? >> The presentation. >> Oh, do you want me to put on the slideshow or have you guys got the slideshow queued up? >> Yeah. Can you take over? >> We have it, but it would be nice if it's on. >> All right, let me get this. How is that? >> That's good. Perfect. >> Wonderful. So, this past month, we have been working closely with the transportation department to prepare or at least to prepare the initial set of runs and routes that will be used
003in the fall routing school start. Now, during this period, there was a lot of back and forth with Eric Keker and just all of the transportation people working there. The reason for this is when we normally do a study, we take some assumptions. When we're putting a solution or getting ready to put a solution on the road, we want to work closely with your transportation department. There is a lot of local knowledge that they have and a lot of local expertise in helping validate what we built as being feasible. And I'm saying all of this now because the big thing that when it comes to building these routes, we want to make sure we're giving your transportation department the best footing possible to step into the next school year. So with that in mind to
004review a bit, we originally engaged back in 2025 to conduct an assessment of your transportation department. And there were a number of findings and changes that came out of that work. And one of the things that we did identify in that study was the opportunity to maybe reduce some of the um routing inefficiencies that we were identifying. It had to do with run times. It had to do with bus loads. It had to do with how they were all tied together. There was a possibility that we could increase your efficiency. And in the best case, we were looking to try to reduce the total number of buses required. So that was part of the study. But you guys have also been undergoing a huge amount of change at the district. most notably with this new
005K through5 school going in as well as all of the other great changes that are happening as a result down in the Musclemen area complex. So, two things we had to keep in mind there. Try to make maximize the efficiency for your district and also take into consideration all the new changes that were happening in the south. And through all that, we worked with your transportation department to help keep the results as accurate as we could. But overall, the primary goal was we wanted to just take into consideration the current ride times for students and making sure that there was consistency in your service because you can try to cut buses left and right, but our goal was to try to make sure that we were doing that while try to while keeping a good
006level of service for your students. So, a lot of balancing factors we had to take into consideration when working on this, but let's take a one quick step back and just do a quick review of terminology. I only really put this in because we often get confused over what is a bus route versus what is a bus run. Now, a bus run is basically a sequence of stops that a bus makes when transporting students to their school of attendance or from their school of attendance. That's basically the period of time where your student is riding the bus. Now, a bus will make multiple runs during a day. And when we put all these runs together, that is what we call a bus route. So, bus run is one chunk of a period of activity in
007a bus, one run. And then a route is all of it together for a single bus across the day. So as an example I just included here bus route number 288 makes two runs in the morning and two in the afternoon. So with a little bit of background stated and a little bit of terminology reviewed, what exactly did we end up with? Well, we started with your existing runs and routes. The goal wasn't to get rid of everything. In fact, a lot of what the Berkeley County Schools transportation department is doing out there is efficient. There are good parts of your transportation department that are operating very effectively with well-designed runs and routes that are as good as they could be given the current parameters. So, in those cases, we tried to preserve them because
008it's hard for us to improve what's already working well. That was part of the balancing process we did. Try to keep what works well and then try to actually see what we can consolidate versus, you know, the inefficiencies there. So, we're not blowing up all of the routes. We're keeping a huge part of your transportation intact, but also trying to see where we could find those efficiencies. To do this we used run optimization route optimization and all of the expertise we have with our team alongside your team as well in the transportation department. So feasibility utmost goal combinating changes taken into consideration and then the question is is efficiency. So we did all this work, did a lot of this stuff, tried to get the route reduction routes, and a lot of this is just
009summarizing the work that's already been done. Now come some here we go with the numbers. We talked before about bus runs. They're not the route. They're just a portion of the activity that buses are doing each day. When we look at your transportation for across all the county, we have four neat little areas that we like to call these zones or complexes for the purposes of this project. Spring Mills, Martinsburg, Hedgesville, and Musclemen. Now, as you can see, Spring Mills, Martinsburg, Hedgesville, about 160 to 148 buses or excuse me, runs in the morning and afternoon all combined. But then you notice the Muscleman complex in the south, 216. you have a lot of volume of transportation focused on that southern area alone. So really it's kind of trying to inform both us and the audience
010about where you guys are currently at and then what we built with the optimization work we did in all four of the zones. We managed to able to consolidate runs. Spring Mills, Martinsburg, Hedgesville, they all saw pretty solid reductions. And this is also keeping intact huge portions of each routing solution that was already efficient. So again, improving on the margins as best as we can while keeping the good stuff intact. However, one place had bigger cuts than the others and that was in the musclemen area. And you know, I could go into the weeds all night about, you know, the complexities of the routing, but to keep it short, when you go to a K through5 system versus what you're currently doing, you're basically shrinking the size for some schools, but more importantly, you're increasing
011the density of the areas buses are traveling. So, when we were designing uh the new Muscleman area complex, we found that especially in the K through5 area that buses were really quick to fill up. They were really quick to get up back on the road, get to school. And as a result, it was the K through five area that we saw the largest reductions. Yes, the middle and high school, we also saw some reductions as well, but really that K through five was the biggest single reduction in bus routes or bus runs we saw during the project work. So, uh, is there any questions from people at this time, especially the board? I know we're covering a lot of stuff here at a lot of speed. Um, otherwise, I will continue on. >> Yeah, I
012just want to Spencer, I just want to clarify that and I want to ask this this question. This is this Ryan. Um, when we think about what creates a more optimal bus ride, we're we're really talking about ridership, right? The number of riders that we can fit on that bus to get them from home to school and back. Is that correct? >> That is correct. The uh stop locations and the student assignments to stops did not change because we wanted to use all valid stop locations and student assignments. So it did come down to how many students can we fit on a bus with the given amount of time that we have and the amount of you know students and the whole distance we have to cover. So each bus we tried to you know
013we tried to put as many students as we could within reason on there. you know, we had tight parameters to work with or were how many students we could put on a run and it was really a matter of how filled up can we make these buses given the amount of time. >> Does that make sense? >> Thank you. >> Question um and this is to Mr. key circ we've had large developments pop up. How I mean they don't instantly fill up home sold. Do you do you just you you have enough flexibility now that when a new development stop starts say up by stone bridge the one on medium road I think it is off do do you have enough time to wait it out to the next year to add a bus route
014or I mean how fast do these places fill up that >> they don't fill up as past as you would think as they open because as the development is developing, we can see like, okay, we're going to need to do something here and it's only to the point where we get a bus load of kids that we're going to put another bus there. Um, we we it's kind of like what Spencer's talking about taking taking part of the run, moving it here, giving us space to to accommodate that development. We've been doing that for years because it takes time for a development to actually come develop every Do do these personnel laws 18A limit because I mean I see on our personnel list this person been on this bus route down the trans what flexibility
015do you have at routes when you have this dynamics of a growth we have >> there's a little bit We we can make changes throughout um we just can't change up to a certain amount and once we hit once we hit that level then it's either um we have to put a personal transfer to get the change around or they have to agree to the change. >> Well that's 50%. >> That's 50%. What the grievance board has brought to us is there's flexibility because the primary job responsibility of operating a school bus is still operating a school bus and you're assigned to a route or an area and just because one student moves in or something you still are doing the same primary responsibility until you start seeing those large 50% increase of time increase
016of stops increase of large amount of mileage or something like that that's where ATA would become but the grievance board said adding run stops here and there still as in the job description is not a change of run that requires a transfer under 18A. So we do >> it's not a stipling as what in a classroom if you have an aid to one student and that student reach for another school you can't move the aid with them unless you go through the >> depending on how that aid was posted. Yeah. I mean it would be stifling if you had somewhere where you had to all of a sudden add 22 because then your substantial have to probably change routing but there are there's a little bit there's some red tape to it >> where it
017gets to the point that you don't recognize the way that ground was totally >> I think the other thing that's important context here is that I mean I don't know that we've ever really taken a deep look at a routing to look at how we can optimize in the past. So this is the first time we've done that and we have software that you know through working with edgelog and our team now understand how to do some of this work right. So these are bigger changes, but refining them every year is going to be a little bit easier because we're taking all that harder work now >> to where we can stay on top of it. And and as we continue to grow, we can continue to optimize as we grow where before we were
018just sort of arbitr. And I think that what you're gonna see here in a second is going to show how this work is going to benefit the district at the whole >> one. With the buses on these optimized runs, is there like a target window or looking at of like capacity? >> Yeah. And even Yeah. I um this is what I gave Spencer. Um for high schools, you don't want really any more than 52 kids on a bus because you can't get three to a seat. So that's what we went with. And we went with Spencer, what was it like 65 I think for elementary because once you get to 65 that means you have 10 or more seats that have three seats. >> Yeah, those those were the absolute maximums but you know I
019still tried to air on the caution. We tried to keep on the conservative side where we could so we had that extra capacity to add students in as the route changes because you always start off with a set of routes at the beginning of the year but they change and they evolve as the season goes on. students get on, they, you know, get reassigned and all that. So that flexibility is something we build in now so that Eric and his team can go take those runs and have that confidence moving forward. >> Well, the other thing is is that just because you have kids that are zoned for that run doesn't mean that the ridership is always going to be there, right? >> Ridership changes daily, >> right? Well, average ridership. So if you see
020that the average ridership is increasing on a on a run that you know has that potential obviously that that affects it but if it also decreases >> then that that has an impact. And my assumption is as our schools that we are going to be building, one that that we're that are currently being built as well as those that are planned to be built um will end up causing our runs and optimizations to only increase optimization. >> Oh yeah. >> As we continue because there will be redistricting that will have to take place. Um probably >> I don't know that we talked about this like especially in the falling waters area those buses are already there >> that that service those schools so you're not really going to see much of an increase in that
021I think it's where if we ever add a bus it's going to have to be um in the new developments over a time span because some of the new development that was sold the other day that's going to be an entire bus >> well according to their number according to their Well, uh I guess because those students are already in our school district. >> Yeah, we would we the big thing is okay, especially like Spencer said in the K5 you you fill a bus up really quick when you were in a smaller area. Yes, it it does it does optimize our system. This is probably for this, but um we always have a problem with students bringing the instruments on the bus because they take a seat almost allow that now >> only as big
022as um >> well no I think you saxophone actually get a saxophone as long as you can hold the case in between your legs and it doesn't impede another thing then we allow I don't bring in personal experience, family issues, but I did have a niece who lived in the same house. Now this is way back in the 80s but she lived in the same house but because it was so crowded. She her district her house would be in one school district one year and in another school district. She was being bounced around because of the routing of the buses. I don't know how many years she was going from one school to another without ever moving. Do we do we have any I I compare that to the DMZ of Vietn areas in this
023county where students are being bounced around without having moved around? No. >> Yes. But it's been because of our self like Bunker Hill for example where we went from third grade to Milbury. >> Okay. Now that is an example of where there's been some bouncing but it's been because of school capacity not transportation and of course I think that because of the work that the board has done to move to K5 there's going to be one more bump potentially for some of those kids but hopefully it will now subside because we're balancing that moment. So >> it would never be good. That would never come. That situation would never come from transportation department now because any kind of different attendance changes is you have it been years since we >> this year we changed >>
024and we'll be doing that work again for falling waters here you know your backup Spencer >> sounds So, we talked about runs and now let's look at the bus routes. So, we had the bus runs that were cut, but that doesn't necessarily equate to the number of buses because most every single bus in your district is already making two runs in the morning and two runs in the afternoon for each of your major tiers. So you might cut a set of runs on one bus, but it might still be making two more runs. So there's a whole period of consolidation we had to do with optimization on the route level to actually see how many buses are we actually cutting. And looking from this, we came up with a range of buses to for them
025to work with. Now optimization will want to pack those buses as tightly as it can be. You know, it our optimization algorithms are aggressive because they want to cut buses. That's where Eric and just working back and forth is come in here and that's why we have a range to work with for buses. They could cut the maximum number if they wanted to or if they want they could actually go on the low end. It's it's a nice thing to kind of work with right now because again it's giving that capacity for transportation department to work with. But even let's look at the low end here. you know, the low end, let's say for Spring Mills, Martinville, Muscleman, you're cutting two to three buses almost on average for each single area. That's a pretty decent
026average across all four of them. Once you look at the high end too, you realize that, okay, we got some spare capacity to work with. You know, if you really want to keep packing those buses, if you really want to chase those timelines and really chase that efficiency, you could get as much as that is what we found. So, will that be actually 19? It maybe or maybe not. But that 8 to 19 bus range right there is a good amount of breathing room that we believe will give the transportation department good footing to work with because they got a lot to do with the K through five stuff going in. Um >> well they did have a more they didn't have a reduction in runs. >> Yeah. >> But that means that they were
027able to consolidate those runs on fewer routes. So they were able to improve the efficiency of those run. Tell me if I'm wrong here. But it's they were able to improve the ridership on runs by cutting runs. But we may not have might not have had as many buses as what we really needed to handle those runs in the past. So that's why there's fewer cuts because >> we didn't have the capacity that we probably had in other areas. >> And I think another important thing to look at here is that what we're really saying here is there's an opportunity. I want to be very clear about this is that >> we know we've headed to the bus drivers. We know that we have to outource a lot to third party vendors. While this says
028that we could reduce our bus buses by 8 to 19 buses, right, which could be a very significant savings, we're not suggesting that we reduce uh our employment of those drivers because there are other things that we can do where we get kids into yellow bus service, right? So what that means is that there's more opportunities for us to bring kids on yellow bus service that is Berkeley County driven than outsourcing to our our outdoor providers. I was gonna say that >> absolutely >> at the end of the day from other >> um but that means >> yeah I just had a quick question. What um I Mr. Kucker or whoever can answer this. Do you perceive any type of um I guess additional pressure on our current drivers in terms of their speed in
029terms of picking up the students to maintain this efficiency. Um I'm not I'm more I'm sort of concerned that drivers will feel pressure like hurry up kids get on the bus like I'm on a time crunch here you know I don't have time for you fooling around type of thing. So, I just I just don't know what type of pressure may be on the drivers in terms of making sure they meet certain times to make sure that this efficiency will work out correctly. >> Very good question. Appreciate you asking that. So, we work with very tight time limits set by Eric and everybody to make sure that we were arriving within a certain range that we weren't picking up kids too early or dropping them off too late. So, within the runs that currently exist,
030we we that's what we use. We didn't create any, we tried not to create any runs that were brand new, long ones or anything that blew out your your current routing solution. Um, but the current pressures really are still there. I mean, your afternoon bell time schedule is still close and we would call that a tight schedule. Um, it's an it's a known problem, you know, that has to be overcome daily at the district and that is something that that will still have to be considered in the future. Um but all of that is already there and we didn't create any new pressures when it comes to time at least. Does that answer your question? >> Yes. Thank you. >> Following along's thing about pressure on the bus drivers. Are we going to have our
031bus drivers responsible for more students with greater density behind them students? And what about the problems we have with students who were not conformed now that they be packed in with more other students who may be of the similar event. Well, that's that's another problem that that you hear about and and it goes back to, you know, the the relationship between the bus garage, the driver and the school principal and how probably kids were you you you have routes where you can't keep a bus drive. I mean, you have high turnover that that's how to pay the bus routes. But, uh, but, you know, this board has to be worried about the safety of the children. And that we're trying to make the buses into a sardine can and we're generating a a new problem.
032Is this factored into this? Uh >> yeah, and that's why I gave Spencer those capacities on a bus so they're not we're not getting overground and the bus driver has the opportunity to make those relationship. We have buzz now that are already had that in the past and I I will give a shout out to our building administrators. They're wonderful workers. Um if there is a a problem student or behavioral challenge, we reach out to them and we all tell you the the the behaviors on the bus, although pipes have changed a little bit, but they've done better. Um the drivers are on time. They're number of time now. That's nothing. But um so what you're saying those times should stay the same. >> They'll be very similar. Well, actually here in a second there's
033a slide that he talks about that you can actually see the average times of whether they increase or decrease. I think it'll actually help. Yeah. >> The the other thing Mr. Murphy with the students is with the K5 transition is you'll see that those buses are no longer having to go to two different schools an elementary and an intermediate to drop off. So if there is a discipline issue they're now work driver now working with one principal versus having to work with students that might be involved from a first grader to a fifth grader on that bus with two different administrations. One administrator could handle the situation now. Plus you already one stop get your bus in and then you're back out. you're actually optimizing the route but not having that transition period or transfer
034buses bringing kids from an elementary to an intermediate. So we are eliminating some of that at the same time with this. So there are some pros to the K5 transition that this optimization setting really did help cut down on some of those issues. >> Yeah. Unfortunately every day and you know the K5 does first eliminate other administrators. >> Thank you. Back up Spencer. Yeah. Okay. Um, so let's see. Lot lot of notes, but a couple ones that we did want to make the uh point about here. I mean, the largest reductions of course were in the muscle zone, muscleman zone. K through 5s did have the biggest impact from a from a pure transportation perspective. I mean, a K through five is preferable than the current setup because like people were saying, you're taking two
035locations and you're combining it into one. And that it just cuts down on distance, it cuts down on logistical nightmares. Um, it just simplifies the transportation system. So, that that's at least where one of the big gains was with Muscleman Zone, or I should say the gains in efficiency, but reductions in bus runs and routes. So, um, another point I wanted to make though, and some of you probably picked up on this when we were talking about total runs cut versus total routes. Um, so the largest driving force, the thing that's still driving your total number of buses is that middle and high school tier. It's it's the number of students that are in there, the the distances that buses are having to travel. Um, and it's just, you know, the the middle and high
036school runs always are tough to deal with because they're always the longest runs in any school district really. You just they they just cover the largest sizes and they transport the most students. It's just the largest volume we deal with in most any school district. And it's the same thing here. Um really, you know, there are some buses that, you know, we we could have kept consolidating the elementary and uh primary school and K through five runs, but then you were just going to have a ton of buses that only serviced, you know, the middle and high school tier in the morning and had nothing else to do. Um so it's still the driving part of your solution is that's where the bus that's where drivers are the busiest. That's where buses are the most
037full and you know where it's just the most volume of transportation is going. Um it makes this optimization work does make it easier now to service that primary school to service the K through five. Um because we've consolidated runs to a very efficient load and time constraints and now Eric and his team have that ability and that breathing room to say okay operationally this will be more comfortable with us. Let's add a bus back in. Let's add let's split these runs up to make it easier for our drivers. It gives some very good um stuff for like your routers to work with. And that's that was really a big goal of just the work we did here. You know, just give give that starting point for for Berkeley so they can go and polish these
038off and really make it work on the roads. The best for your drivers, the best for your students and your parents. >> I would have thought there was a lot less high school um kids riding the bus because of >> not really not really when when we looked at um uh we have to do every before October 1st or October 1st we have to give ridership to the state and it's broken down in the high school middle school and the elementary and it actually the high schoolers the middle schoolers there's about 800 more >> wow it's delayed a lot a lot of kids now are are delaying when they get their driver's license compared to what it was 10, 15, 20 years ago. I I don't know why, but they're they're just blanking when they
039get their license. >> I've had to pay the driver. >> I had to do that with my my son, my daughter, not as much. also the the choice issue of ch parents homeschooling their children at a early age >> and then do you see a an increase of students who I guess it's too new the high school level the parents want their children to be challenged and they're not capable of covering the subjects then they would just like up until recently St. students only went to eighth grade and then they go over to public high school or to I think they were already or something. Do you have we had any experience about the choice school students parents embrace the challenge when they're younger but then coming into the public school system? Not really. We
040haven't se when so if I'm understanding this when it went if they come back we didn't the only time we really saw an increase in that was two years ago um and it was the virtual school part where they started out virtual first semester and a bunch of them came back and that was that was a little troublesome um because there was a lot of it was a lot of kids in one area and so but we made do with it. we just move some stuff around. Well, we really don't we really haven't seen that. But I will tell you as October first ridership, we were actually for for the first time in probably two years ridership. I think the other thing is is that as the students get older more independent mom and dad
041taking them to school pick them up because they like okay they can handle the they can handle the the uh the complexity of getting on the bus and getting off they're developing more trust with the school system because they know that when they get off the bus at school someone's there those kind of things. So >> it's not as many high schools there are, you know, primary and >> well I think that's one of the things we did see on the initial transportation study was those elementary and intermediate parents >> choosing to drive their kids to school that volume. You've seen that on campus drive. You've seen that the issue at Hedgesville Elementary now. So we're starting the driving numbers that you wouldn't have saw 20 years ago has dramatically increased. So that's another reason
042why there's more secondary >> and the timing of those schools versus somebody trying to get to work for a kid at 7:30 in the morning or something like that. So >> and as the students get older, >> they want to socialize with their peers and so the bus is another opportunity to be able to talk because you're not supposed to talk in class or a lot of the All the busy kids are middle school. >> Spencer. >> All right. Uh this next slide is it it provides some value you know it's more for people to read on their own time too because it's just a lot of averages. Um it really is just showing that you know average run load during optimization increased on average. You know we're trying to put on an average 10
043students on uh per run versus what was happening before. That's just it's just averages you know I mean it's just showing that generally there's been an improvement increased average run loads. We've decreased average front times a little bit. Um, we added more stops per bus run. So, you know, each bus is making more stops. Um, like the K35 would be an example there where, you know, you're just packing them on. Uh, but also we managed to, you know, decrease the loaded mileages. You know, then when we talk about loaded mileage, I'm talking about the core of the bus run when the student is riding the bus. Um, that is what we call the loaded mileage. When we talk about dead head mileage on the other hand, we're talking about the travel from the end of
044one bus run to the start of the next. So loaded run is the actual bus carrying students. The dead head run is the in between stuff when buses are trying to make connections. And one of the things we did notice is that you know deadhead mileage connections did increase a little bit on average, but that was a result of trying to consolidate bus routes and try and that's just that happens generally when you're trying to do that. um deadhead mileages can change a bit with checkpoints and driver parkouts. So, you know, that number is subject to change a bit. Um but again, just showing that, you know, this is kind of the general trend of where things are going. Buses are a little bit shorter on time. They're a little bit more full. They're making
045a few more stops on average, but in general, this improvement when you stack it across the whole district, it it adds up. And that's that's kind of what we're trying to visualize here. small changes on the individual level that add up to a large amount, you know, when you put it all together. >> Hey Spencer, what uh I mean I think that this is actually some really good really good data that shows the averages. Um what is the longest bus run we have at the school district? For example, what for a student that has the longest ride time, what would that be? That's probably the ones for uh Eric. Probably the ones the Heritage, right? Way the high school. They go way out. >> Yeah, because those those I try we try to optimize those.
046We try to improve upon them, but they're long, but the the best we could do, you know, the best they could do really. Uh so those those are the longest runs really. I mean, the ones that you're already doing that we couldn't really improve. >> Yeah, those 50-minute runs. I will say though, when you look at the average run time and 50 minutes being the maximum, when you compare that to the rest of the state of West Virginia, >> we're doing really >> really good. Like really good. >> I mean, the state sort of recommends an hour or less, right? >> Well, actually, >> it's 30 minutes for K through five, um, 40 minutes for middle school and 45. >> Okay, >> that's recommended. But there are but there are plenty of school systems out
047there in West Virginia where kids are on the bus. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> years something showing up here but we have gridlock in this county because of growth of the number of people riding driving to work and on the roads >> especially in certain ways. It certainly is route nine from the northern county line east and I'm sure you know but >> we if we had fewer buses on the road even though they may be making more stops in this case two and a half stops it'll be less traffic backed up behind you a number of buses gusts allowing some breathing regard because we're worried about people passing the buses when they should be stopped and the safety of our students and I I can see in this in this setting that that would be
048an improvement for the community with the the impediment of buses stop but few buses I'm stressful for a driver stuck in those package chains just sitting there and sitting there when they school and they got to school for that's stressful. >> Yeah. Well, I will say um when Spencer initially um provided the first result, that was one of the things that we had to go back and do. >> Um yeah, >> because of the time. It's really what our hurdle is getting out of the high school to middle school and getting the route started because then you have to get back within a reasonable amount of elementary school. So that's one of our biggest hurdles in this Um yeah, and Eric was Eric and you know team were really good at providing us bell times,
049arrival windows, departure windows, um and just guidelines of like when they when is acceptable for buses to be arriving, departing, but also trying to spread that out a bit as well because there are um issues with, you know, loading, you know, how many buses you can fit in a certain loading zone at a time. Um so we tried to preserve that and also replicate that as much as we could after we did the initial results. So that was part of the back and forth as Eric was talking about. Eric, um I I mean I don't want to advocate this, but um how many counties in the state of all of the schools K through 12 on bus at the same time? Do you know that? I I don't know the exact answer, but I would
050say >> there's a lot county your smaller population. >> Yeah. I mean, we don't want our little children with their high school, especially seventh grade. I call it seventh grade. But the uh just one of the >> Yeah, there there are there there are a few the ones that had the smaller population. >> I know when I was in school centuries ago, we were all they all same. Is the um the run time is it including traffic patterns for like the morning of those bikes? >> Um Spencer, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but what you use adds so many seconds per stop. >> I don't necessarily think it's the spikes in traffic. >> Um because that would be a little difficult to know when you're having those spikes in traffic. But we do
051allow time for stops. Um in so many seconds or a minute or however it it does adjust it a little bit out. >> It it does adjust it. And there's a the map that they use has a ton of turn directions, um turn restrictions. I mean it's it's kind of tailored to using school buses and kind of like how they specifically operate. And when putting stops on runs, yeah, there's also time that's added from that. So the runtime will change and recalculate as you're adding stops, you know, removing them. Um, or even just reassigning to different routes. Um, so it kind of recalculates as you go as well too. So there is there is a lot of consideration for time in the how it's calculated. I say like on like ways it like you like
052put it in the time you can like schedule your day. >> Yeah, there's there's number of tools in the system too that you we can slow runs down in the morning or afternoon if we need to um just to better reflect the map. And that that gets into the question too of you know variable speeds something that you know we've been working on as industry for a long time because traffic is different in the morning and afternoon. So you do have to kind of use averages in there, but that's where all these additional time additions come in and all these additional tools that it's at the fingertips of your transportation department where they can make the run time slower and longer to accurately reflect when there's traffic. So >> just like a little criticism I
053mean like as a board member like getting like granular data trying to optimize that's a I think that's in this day and age it's a pretty good piece of data that would be helpful if a guided platform would be able to do that. especially historical historical drought time data >> within those interp. >> Well, I I'm looking at it. I I I hear what Mr. part is saying because in in our day and age of integrating AI into our system and understanding optimization and runs and all that, especially in our area that is so um the lack of a better way of saying is antiquated with our road system as compared to other maybe other areas of our country that might be up with infrastructure. um with their development. Our our area is not so
054you know that they you know that would be very intuitive that maybe one area they it can adapt well and then is this area it can adapt to the fact that we aren't able to keep up and transform and better optimize our runs and routes. No, I it would be great if we could, but we've got some technology, but not quite like that, but we do have the parent portal that you sign up for it as a parent, you're going to see where your child bus is and it will let you know you set up the parameters. Sure. It'll then when your child is so far away. >> I mean, we use we do leverage AI in our solutions already. I mean our our our proprietary intelligence algorithms, you know, do use re reasoning with
055its optimization software. Um I mean this is what we've been building you know for decades really and it's very you know specific to transportation but it is you know a classic machine learning intelligence with it. It's just we have built it and we you know when it comes to actually if the if the concern is over you know traffic times and all that stuff I mean we already do that in our new Athena software. I mean where we leverage Google API to help you know make runtimes accurate but Eric already made the point though is they we were using GPS what the buses are actually doing on the roads too. um you know AI and all that stuff they'll get you part of the way but it does require you know the actual data of
056what the buses are doing too so that's kind >> on any given day >> you can be stuck out here while alcohol is dry I don't care what AI you're using >> um you know because we get the parents all the time or whatever I think that you can only do so much. >> Yeah. And we got to be real careful, but we don't want to be changing the time daily. >> No, but but I'm looking at it from the perspective of >> annually we go to >> Right. Right. I'm looking at that perspective. >> I'm looking at as a study optimization study. We had that data. It wasn't really impaired kind of a disconnect how I see it. I can be I can be off base but I think that would be a Spencer
057question because I think we do. >> You just said that you said >> yeah we because Spencer does use AI that's integrated on their optimization software to where you go in the stop time. How long does it take get from here to here? and we add so much time to a stop um and it's never going to work. It's just not going to work. But I I will say that the edgelock software comes very very close. >> And as much as we can leverage machines and machine learning to our ends to help get us there, it really is the local knowledge of Eric and his team as well as like our expertise that really helped get to where we were. you know, the these these tools are tools, you know, and with what's actually getting
058put on the road, it has to make a delicate balance there between, you know, what it could do versus what, you know, what is realistic. And that's the fine line we've had to to thread here. You know, we've had to use we leverage what tools we have. But, you know, we got to make sure we're staying realistic here and not trying to promise the moon because, yeah, we don't want to put a solution on the road that's going to fail. you know that that's our that was our goal here you know and we believe that we produced a good solution. So um last slide here it's just talking next steps. We're going to provide the data to you guys. We're already working with their uh IT team getting stuff set up. It should be available
059by the end of the week for Eric and his team so they can start making some work on it. We'll be working through uh March with Eric and his team as well because there's just always there's always stuff that you know we'll want to review things to look at um but also just provide that continuing support to your district um at least so Eric can actually you know feel the most comfortable moving forward. So that's really where our next steps are and really the end of my presentation here. Um, I know we've talked a lot here, but that's Yeah, that's my spiel, so to speak. stuff. >> Not as many because each year we what we do is look at the attrition part of you know can if someone retires can we take that run
060and and we've done that before. We've not posted a run because we knew we could get those stops somewhere else. uh but not on this level. >> I mean the most you probably >> Mr. Right has a question. >> Mr. >> Uh yes um have you shared Eric have you shared this information with the uh the drivers and if so um what type of response did you get from them? I have not heard it because it's not final and I don't I think personnel law doesn't allow us to talk about any type of while moving forward. There's a couple let me just let me I apologize two things is one we want the board to be aware of before we start talking to employees about the potential strategies that we may use for efficiency. said
061that one the board hears it first and if when we go to talk to some of our employee groups if if there's frustration that you're not hearing about it from them you're hearing about from leadership first right so that's the first thing we wanted to make sure in place but the second thing is that we've been very very careful tonight to not go down like well we're going to take bus 2025 and consolidate that with bus 2045 and create this this more efficient route because again um we want to make sure that those things are correct. And as we go into whether or not do we have to post that position or is it one of those things that uh there's there's not enough change that you need to post it but maybe someone has
062to be on transfer or or what have you. So, we have to walk through that a little bit, but we wanted to we wanted to get a pulse check of the board so you can see one here are some efficiencies that we've recognized through this work that we think can improve the the service model for our students or for our families. in to try to be able to have positions that will allow us to utilize our yellow bus fleet to service more of our special populations to reduce cost. But ultimately, you know, we wanted the board to be aware of what some of those potential things could be before we start having those conversations um out with with the groups and and be able to give them more granular information. Um, obviously they know it's
063been advertised. We want to talk more first, but that was really important for us that you all have that preview before before we start having some conversations. >> Well, I was anxious for individual to hear what exactly. There's so many out there. >> There is. >> Yeah, we heard a couple today. But my goal is um as soon as the it is it updates our server and that Spencer's information gets to us my team is ready to go it to plug it in and you know nail down exactly what we do think it's a very fair statement to say that we do not expect to reduce any bus driving staff. Um, and I think that, you know, as we, you know, obviously, you know, as it relates to aids on buses, for example, that's driven
064by IEPs and those sort of things. So, you know, the services for our students is obviously going to be first and foremost as to how those decisions are made. Um, >> and that's not new. That that happens, you know, every year. Um, and and I don't anticipate, you know, huge upsets to that part or anything like that as well. You I know the other one that we've also heard in the past was are the board considering or is the district considering making a recommendation to you know u transition all bus aids to busclassroom ECATs that that also is not occurring on the record. Uh there are sometimes opportunities when we have a vacancy that we could post something that could benefit a school with a a daytime classroom uh support uh ECAT and bus driver
065ECAT for a and if that opportunity presents itself then we may want to do that but we're not looking at widespread >> I think I think the total we have out there is like four or five Um, and honestly in some in those areas it's worked out very well, but it's not something that we think that is a blanket solution either. So I'm seeing not first I think we should and I hope watching this presentation. We should uh as a board I I board member I really appreciate the the cooperation that bus drivers uh are working out with the the transportation department in these areas where there's shortages and you have to make double rounds. There's a lot of stress on our grounds and I and I appreciate flexibility that I I see and and
066more importantly hear about more and more >> I got to give a shout out year and a half ago um you know we were cancelled they we worked with them and they are buying into the fact that, you know, we need to get the kids to school, the best place for a student is in school. So, they have worked together and it's it's amazing to see sometimes like um we we ask them and and a lot of times it'll be a group of bus drivers that needs to pick up parts of a run. They say, "Well, I'll get this, you get that, and we'll get it taken care of." So, big shout out to the bus drivers. >> They have really bought into this. I think the blue is I love it. >> And quite
067frankly, I see a little bargaining going on there. I'm not that one. see the black garden still in there in a crack somewhere in the in the system. But uh looking at my post not posting the uh in the survey was there any did you have any explorations in other areas like suggestions in regional maintenance uh locations for buses rather than have centralized places or just say >> rout. Okay. Okay. Also, prek is not a part of this. All right. And and Dr. Sax pointed out that there will be other opportunities that will help offset the contracted services and we're now I believe spending about $6 million and some of those routes may be more desirable than having a bus route. So, Yeah. One final question, Mr. Kissa. Are the special ed runs more desirable
068than general runs? used to be and not so much anymore because of the um behaviors because Berkeley County, I will say this, does a very good job of only the students that need to be on those specializ specialized buses um are there because they have to have a they need they need the supervision. Um and there we've got a number of specialized buses that have severe. Um, so a lot of folks think twice now about taking >> we're being special. >> I think the prek special needs is mostly epic. Yes, >> but those are bands and it is Epic is much more affordable than >> but some of Epic. >> Well, that's another thing we tried to look at. >> We we started have to give a shout out to Jim Butch, too. I finally
069talked him in to allow me to to purchase the bigger bands. So that was the goal to get more and more students on a band because some of those little bands so little that you may not get but they >> but I've seen some of >> Yeah. It could be that day because we only transport those special children, but we really want >> but we we also have a lot of runs, for James Ramsey High School. We have the Blue Ridge McBride, but in the mornings and afternoons, they they are coupled with >> I will say this when I have to give mileage for the state every year as part of my reimbursement. Um, our It's it's um our tech which includes blue any any place we take a child during during the day for
070teaching and learning counts as that model. Every year I have to explain to the state why it has increased more than 10%. Because we're we are driving more miles and we're taking more kids than questions for Spencer like the students that are earning like seats. What is it now and what's it like projected that fall? >> I might need to have that question repeated. >> I'm sorry. like the u the students that are in like three seats. What do you know what the percentage is now of those bus runs of those uh routes and whated to be how many bus routes will have at least one kid of one seat that has three students? >> So if you're referring to three seats or three seats or three seats? >> Three to a seat. >> 32
071a seat. The only place that really would have ever happened would be at the primary school. I mean like K through two. Uh but we didn't we tried to stay away from that really. We tried to decrease it where we could. >> Yeah. But we we get into a situation where like you Murphy is talking about when you get into a development then you're you're kind of at a loss as to you may have to put a third person in that seat. Um how we we we try not to do that in all high school because kids are busy. >> Um but you can say the drivers know that you know the bigger kids need two seat the smaller kids can get three. >> Eric if I recall correctly um most of those three students
072to a seat occurs on double runs which are the really short ones that where the buses are going out. So usually when those students are packed in there they're on the bus the shortest amount of time. um compromises, you know, uh but it makes the double runs very effective in their current situation. >> Yeah. No one is like sacrificing runs for uh you know >> that was one of the things that that the parameters I gave Spencer we don't don't put these things at full passing. >> Yeah. Because you eventually have to have time, you have to have food to grow >> because what we don't want to do is, you know, take these runs and do something else with them, but then have to bring them back because, you know, we didn't consider >>
073one day there might not only be so many kids on that bus and the next day there's 10 that weren't there the day before. So you can't >> that's when that's Mr. Murphy alluded to that's when you get the >> Yeah, you are a growing district and it's a it's a balance that you're always chasing because students move in, students move out, buses, you know, sometimes during the year a bus might become overloaded and they have to split it up. You know, these things happen in a district that's changing a lot like yours. Um, so it's it's a it's m they're spinning a lot of plates. I like to I like to describe transportation. >> Question. >> Okay. Any more questions? >> I guess you know just for some generalized feedback the eight to 19
074knowing that you know if we were get from the mild I think he's called low impact to high impact you know knowing that 19 folks you know be still utilized but not eliminated. Do you all feel comfortable trying to maximize the efficiency or do you want us to find like a sort of a happy medium or you where is the board's comfort level in trying to for us moving forward to give to give them guidance? I would like to see that us to do whatever safest whatever doesn't crit on buses. That's what I like. I don't want to say >> Eric said there's a certain point of saturation they've already been through the process but we have some developments that are on the plans that >> we have to if we adopt something now I
075don't want this to be next year sorry folks have reroute I want to I want to see have a thing if it's a number between the minimum maximum We're currently working with all that data and we have a general idea. Um, like I said before, the biggest hurdle we have is making sure that we're getting out of the high school, middle school, getting around the back to the elementary school. >> Yeah. Keep the safety keep safety as as the guiding guiding simple. And I think after that is is you're going to align it perfectly. Um and then from there we're going to just be able to put more kids on the buses. Well, and I'm thankful for also I mean this is great but every day every other day it's something that says okay in
076this area I mean okay this is up to date now but >> two weeks from now >> well I think what's also important is that as we move this efficiency it actually allows us more capacity to address that so that if we have to add a bus or something that we now might not have to go out and hire the bus driver because we had we had that >> and and then of course you know having drivers have to double up because of you know number that called out that day or what have you for coverage you know that's also really really help with the coverage the coverage and what I would say is the the end of service optics for back to our home. One of the things you mentioned earlier but we didn't
077explore was the file between no school high school and we probably learned was there a recommendation there that that you said was I mean presently it's tough to meet that you need to add five minutes or something cushion or something where I just remember you talking earlier in the first part of your presentation about the challenger. >> Yeah, it's more it's more about um the K the Kside model. The reason we like it so much because we're only going back to one, >> right? But the intermediates and primaries is tough part because a lot like we have heights in overview are a big challenge for us just because of the distance apart and traffic we have we have to encounter. So it's very important that whatever bus routes we have in that area get back
078to time when when their bell rings so that they can get over to heights of time because their their bell has already rung and there we got students waiting sometimes 15 minutes um and that's that takes more supervision. So we have to be very careful with that. We're getting back to that first time. And I in another area that I talked to a principal is north middle. You have a school that's feeding three different high schools and you have people have to stay there much longer waiting food because of all and and Mr. Pit was specifically asked, can you help us get either down to two bus two schools or something? What what thought has been given to their dilemma? >> Well, that would have to be done in order to get down. >> Well,
079when I was there, it was that way then. >> Nothing's changed with that. >> Shouldn't we try to solve a problem? How much time left do you >> think we have to look at redistricting for falling water which will change potentially some we also know that if the bond passes of the bill independent middle that's going to potentially change the feeder pattern. So, with that being said, we can actually take a look at that when we do that work. >> They're very good at getting there. I will say because um north range I think um and last but thing is they're coming from spring and school staff how they all make this work. >> They all make it work >> and it's transportation. >> Yeah. They just don't like to work so long. >> That
080is true. >> Thank you. >> Appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Bye.