Despite part of Greenfield’s school bus fleet being sidelined after a spot inspection by the Ohio State Highway Patrol last week, all the buses are expected to be back in service within the week.
According to Greenfield Exempted Village School District Superintendent Joe Wills, aside from a couple of routes running about 20 minutes behind schedule, there was no disruption to students being picked up in the morning and dropped off after school.
To keep the transportation of students moving along, Wills said spare buses were borrowed from the Hillsboro, Leesburg, Washington Court House, and Chillicothe school districts.
He said the state patrol performed a spot inspection last week, as it has done with other school districts, and various issues were determined to exist. The superintendent did not provide any further detail on what the issues were, but he said some of those issues were corrected while the inspections were occurring and the buses put back in service. Additionally, he said that the work being done on the buses, to his knowledge, were “not costly items.”
The state patrol’s 2016 reference manual for school bus inspections states that each bus during the school year is to undergo a “minimum of one spot inspection.”
Wills said it is up to the discretion of the state patrol to determine what justifies a school bus being taken out of service. All school buses must also undergo a yearly inspection in the summer. Every one of Greenfield’s school buses passed that inspection, Wills said.
The district has 15 bus routes, Wills said, and has backup buses. On Monday, 12 of those routes were covered by Greenfield school buses. He said that the rest of the buses affected are expected to be back in service within the week, following the completion of requested inspections by the state patrol.
“We will not put a bus out until it is inspected and approved,” Will said Monday, adding that the district is “working to correct any issues” brought up in the inspection.
Reach Angela Shepherd at 937-393-3456, ext. 1681, or on Twitter @wordyshepherd.
