TEA Transportation Operations Reports, 1996-97. Liberty Eylau and Texarkana are in the Bowie County Cooperative Exhibit 10-10 provides an overview of the times the buses are in operation and the total miles driven per day. Although Exhibit 10-10 shows the starting and ending times for routes, it does not show the actual amount of time the students and drivers are on the bus. Associated with this overall concern was the consolidation process at the high school, whereby regular program students are transported to the high school and transferred to other buses for transport to their respective schools. A lack of accurate route, student, and school boundary maps did not allow the review team to conduct an intensive study to discover why the linear density is low compared to the peer school districts.
Many districts use multiple bell schedules allowing a single bus to run more than one route.
If one bus is able to run two routes, the number of buses and drivers needed to transport all of the students could be reduced by as much as 50 percent. Unfortunately, elementary and intermediate students who ride the bus must be transported north to the high school to ride south to their school. Establish staggered bell times, increase bus ridership, and improve routing efficiencies. The district should hire a consultant to implement the recommended improvements, which will increase the linear density and the level of reimbursements from the state. The director of Transportation, with input and support from the TEA Transportation Department, develops a request for proposals for establishing staggered bell times and other routing improvements and sends it to appropriate vendors.