Kenny Robbins, buildings, grounds and transportation director for Regional School Unit 56 in Dixfield, stands Monday inside the new $1 million bus garage at 45 Middle School Drive in Dixfield. The 40- by 80-foot building has two bays, a bus lift, an office, a bathroom, and a storage and parts room. “In my wildest dream I never thought we’d have our own facility,” he said. Marianne Hutchinson/Rumford Falls Times

DIXFIELD — Regional School Unit 56’s new bus garage at 45 Middle School Drive will be ready this fall, Kenny Robbins, building, grounds and transportation director, said.

“In my wildest dream I never thought we’d have our own facility,” he said. “This is pretty special, for a school this size, a district this size … “So, we’re very thankful for it.”

For more than 30 years the district rented space at the Dixfield Public Works garage. It was “six miles down and back” from the parking lot on Middle School Drive, Robbins said.

The new garage is on the same lot as T.W. Kelly Dirigo Middle School.

“Now my mechanics are based here where my buses are” and “not running things back and forth two or three times a day,” he said.

The new $1 million Regional School Unit 56 bus garage at 45 Middle School Drive in Dixfield will be ready this fall, Kenny Robbins, building, grounds and transportation director, said. The 40- by 80-foot building has two bays, a bus lift, an office, a bathroom, and a storage and parts room. Marianne Hutchinson/Rumford Falls Times

The 40- by 80-foot building has two bays, a bus lift, an office, a bathroom, and a storage and parts room, he said.

The district has two full-time mechanics.

During the school year, 20 school buses complete 14 daily bus runs, and six vans run each day, Robbins said.

The district serves students from Canton, Carthage, Dixfield and Peru who attend either Dirigo High School or T.W. Kelly Dirigo Middle School, both in Dixfield, or Dirigo Elementary School in Peru.

Most of the vans transport students to and from the Western Foothills Regional Program building in Rumford, which serves students with special needs from kindergarten through grade 12 with special needs. One school bus brings some of the district’s special needs students to Margaret Murphy Centers For Children in Auburn, Robbins said.

The new garage was partly prompted by an $8,000 increase in rent for the town garage over a year ago. District residents voted to approve it in June 2023. A month before, they authorized transferring $565,000 from the year’s fund balances to the bus garage capital reserve fund, which had $500,000. It covered nearly the entire cost of the building, Superintendent Pam Doyen said at that time.