At the April 15, 2008 Fairview Park City School Board Meeting, the district approved the immediate purchase of six school buses. By implementing this initiative, the district is projected to save over $700,000.

"This is a cost-saving opportunity to save a significant amount of tax dollars over the upcoming fiscal years," said FPCS Treasurer Ryan Ghizzoni. "While creating a safer environment for our students and staff."

Without taking this initiative, the cost of repairs for the existing fleet would continue to rise if the current replacement plan of one bus purchase per year continued. A portion of the funds that were used for maintaining the current fleet will be reallocated into a Transportation Permanent Improvement Fund [TPIF], with the remaining portion of funds being returned to the General Fund. Reallocated TPIF will accumulate to $300,000, and will ultimately allow the district to pay for the replacement buses in six years.

Two 2008 and four 2009 Blue Bird buses are expected to arrive in the district the beginning of May. The district will retire four 1993 Blue Bird buses from the current fleet.

"This is Fairview Park moving forward," said FPCS Director of Transportation Nancy Colby. "Now we have safer buses for our students and drivers."

Student Transportation
Kindergarten through sixth-grade students who live one mile from school are eligible for transportation. Seventh and eighth-grade students who live two miles from school are eligible for transportation (seat availability option is offered). The Transportation Department will notify students who are eligible for transportation in August.

Other Transportation Facts
In November 2007, Transportation received a new school bus. The 2008, 72-passenger Bluebird bus is driven by the district's senior driver, Diana Fischbach. The bus is the only one in the district with a white roof.

We route six buses daily. They drive 35 runs to form/from schools. On average five of our buses put on 60 miles daily, and our sixth bus is “out of district” and averages close to 125 miles daily. That equals 425 miles daily on our school buses.

We own nine buses and use three of them as spare buses for breakdowns and daily field trips. We will have a new bus in November 2007 and another bus in March 2008.

We do over 550 field trips annually 550 field trips annually including athletic trips.

We employ nine bus drivers. Six regular drivers and three substitute drivers. Our most senior driver has driven for Fairview Park Schools for 25 years!!

School buses are the only mode of transport to 25 million students, and in Ohio, there are 20,000 school buses that transport 1 1/3 million students.

The State Highway Patrol does at least two inspections of school buses annually. They have a scheduled inspection in July, and perform a surprise inspection in January or February.