PARIS — School bus drivers are prepared to hit the road Monday for the first day of school in the Oxford Hills School District.
With seven routes eliminated this year in an attempt to streamline transportation costs that total $1.9 million, drivers have been meeting all week to reassign routes and prepare for the first bus run of the year.
It’s no small task for the 35 bus drivers covering 750,000 miles each year.
“Oh, I’ve been doing this 40 years,” Sandra Kennaugh of Paris said. “This year I’m going up on Stearns Hill. It’s different, but the challenge is the kids don’t know me.
“I have to scout it out,” said Kennaugh, whose bus route has taken her up Paris Hill for the past 38 years.
Each route needs to take an hour to one hour and 10 minutes to ensure that the two daily bus runs — middle and high school first, and elementary second — get the students to their classes on time.
Kennaugh said she is not worried in the least about adding a new road to her bus run.
“There’s been so many I can’t tell you,” she said. “It’s pretty much the same. It just takes practice,” she said.
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