School board gives green light for more new buses
New fleet will triple number of buses with A/C
by Ambria Hammel

DVUSD – Students often learn in pre‑school or kindergarten about how the wheels on the bus “go round and round all through the town.” Students across the Deer Valley Unified School District will have to wait, however, to find out specifically where 40 new buses will go when they begin rolling in August. 

Earlier this month, DVUSD’s governing board approved the nearly $2.3 million purchase of 20 new 84‑passenger buses from Canyon State Bus Sales, a full‑service distributor of Blue Bird school buses. A previous order of the same size was approved in March. The first shipment will come in August and the second in October.

“We have an aging fleet, and this is one of the first major purchases to not only keep up with our growth but replace our older buses,” said Nick Portonova, DVUSD’s director of transportation. Currently, the district has 213 buses in its fleet, which includes substitutes for regular routes and 69 smaller motorcoaches for transporting special education students.

“Our objective is in the next few years to have buses no older than 12 years old,” Portonova related. Thirty of the district’s buses now in operation date back as far as the late ’80s. The majority of them were purchased after 2000.

DVUSD officials are presently conducting an annual evaluation of bus routes to see which ones need to be added, split or eliminated. Portonova said the routes will likely be revised due to boundary changes in Anthem and district growth. The opening of Canyon Springs School near Anthem Way west of I‑17 will also affect routing. Preliminary plans should be drawn by early June.

What is certain, however, is that the new buses will not have seat belts.

Portonova said the district has “a safe‑seat environment,” explaining that each seat back is padded and high enough to protect students.

It is also certain that the buses will feature a flat front with a more panoramic windshield than the traditional yellow transporters–and will be air conditioned. Only 19 of the district’s 90 buses serving students on regular routes currently have air conditioning.

“Hopefully, some day we’ll have all air‑conditioned buses,” Portonova said.

All buses used to transport special ed students are air conditioned to ensure their medical safety, and district guidelines state that routes longer than 30 minutes and those involving the transportation of kindergartners should also use air‑conditioned buses.

In the 2005‑2006 school year, one of three buses at both New River Elementary and Anthem School had air conditioning. Three of the five transporters for Desert Mountain School and three of the nine available to Boulder Creek High School students had air conditioning. Portonova estimated the maximum ride time throughout the district at 45 minutes.

Earlier start times for two schools in Anthem is another given when addressing transportation needs. Both Anthem and Gavilan Peak schools will start classes 15 minutes earlier to aid the transportation effort.

Diane Drumwright in the district’s public relations office said almost all of DVUSD’s buses do double duty, meaning the drivers drop off a load of students at a high school and then proceed to pick up a second load of students to drop off at a K‑8 school.

The earlier start times will allow some buses to do a second K‑8 school. DVUSD plans to hire 35‑50 new drivers to replace retirees and meet the growing needs of the district’s transportation system.

Reach the reporter at ambria@thedesertadvocate.com.