KYLE MURPHYStaff Writer

Tullahoma City Schools students are preparing for another school year at their respective campuses, where many of them will either walk, ride a bike or drive to school each morning and afternoon.

Yet, at different times of the year, depending on the weather, there will be those who go online and ask “Why aren’t there buses?”

As it turns out, the Tullahoma City Schools (TCS) administration has looked into this question and conducted a study to see the what the practicality of establishing a full school bus transportation system for the district. 

Understanding the current system

For TCS, there are currently 10 school buses in its fleet, with two buses on the docket to be replaced over the next two years. The TCS Board of Education has approved one of these buses to be replaced, and it is scheduled to be delivered in FY26. The school system has a transportation supervisor who oversees all the drivers, routes, maintenance and care for the buses.

According to Deputy Director of Schools Dr. April Norris, who oversees the transportation department, the last school year saw five routes running in morning, three routes running in mid-day and five routes running in the afternoon for students with disabilities. These students use the buses as a need to get to and from school for their education. Other than running those routes, the buses are used to transport students for field trips and for sports teams traveling for games and tournaments.

Another aspect to understand the school district’s situation for transportation is the geographical layout of the district. According to Director of Schools Dr. Catherine Stephens, the district is laid out into four quadrants, where two elementary schools will be on the east and west side of town in each quadrant. From there, the two schools on the east side will go to East Middle School, while the two schools on the west side go to West Middle School. Then, the middle school students will converge to Tullahoma High School, which is at the center of the district. Stephens noted that when she was coming to Tullahoma for the roll of Director of Schools, she learned that Tullahoma has never had a full fleet bus service like Coffee County Schools, which needs bus services due to how geographically expansive its school system is.

 “It’s a huge territory with lots of space in between,” Stephens explained, “whereas Tullahoma does not have that same geographic boundary and has created schools in which students have options for how they can get to school, whether that’s walking, riding a bike or being in a car.”

As for transportation budget, Finance Director Hank Jordan said the upcoming FY25-26 budget for transportation, as part of the school’s budget that just passed, is $686,000. Within that budget is $152,000 for a new bus to be purchased, while the rest of the budget goes towards the salaries and benefits of the drivers and aids, maintenance and repair, gasoline and other contracted services. 

The study’s findings

Earlier this year, Tullahoma was hit with various instances of rain and snow, with the latter resulting in the school system to close for a couple of days. It was during these instances where residents seem to voice their concerns about the supposed lack of bus services for students. Back in February, during the height of the winter storms, The News conducted an online poll asking residents if they would approve of TCS implementing a bus system to transport students to and from school? The results from the poll showed that 81.4% said they would not approve of the school district implementing a bus system, while 18.6% approved.

In regards to what state laws say about transportation, T.C.A. 49-6-2101 states that “boards of education may provide school transportation facilities for children who live more than one and half miles by the nearest accessible route from the school to which they are assigned by the board of education and in which they are enrolled.”

In other words, school boards are not required by law to provide school transportations to students.

Yet, as the city of Tullahoma continues to see growth, so does the school system. According to Stephens, the school district has over the years looked to Bel-Aire and Robert E. Lee elementary schools as point references when it came to addressing growth, as those campuses have been more in need of space additions. By looking at these two schools, they can determine what they can do to necessitate the needs of the schools.

“We have looked at how many classrooms we believe each building needs, whether one needs a gymnasium, just different things, and that will, we believe, capture and in reorganizing our early childhood classes eventually over to the early childhood center,” Stephens said. “We’re gonna free up some spaces at some locations that will allow East Lincoln and TVA [Tullahoma Virtual Academy] to do some expanding that they need to do.”

The topic of growth included the question of establishing a school bus transportation service for students. So, the school system decided to conduct a study in 2024 where they examined a school system that was comparably-sized to TCS, and evaluated what would be the potential startup cost, non-fiscal challenges and benefits to having school bus services. The results from the study would be shared with and discussed with the Tullahoma Board of Mayor and Aldermen during a study session in May 2024.

According to the study’s findings, which was provided to The News by TCS, the potential startup cost would be $6,286,713 minimally, which consisted of: adding 26 more buses ($145,000 per 78-passenger bus) totaling out to $3,770,000; hiring 28 more drivers with the driver personnel cost being $1,642,085; the bus aide personnel cost being $137,579; the transportation office personnel cost being $315,708; the maintenance/upkeep cost would be $346,341; the necessary software would be $33,000 and the insurance needed would be $42,000. Jordan added that the potential start-up cost did not include the cost to have a bus garage like the Coffee County School’s bus garage, which would need according to the study: land for the buses, fencing around the buses, video surveillance for buses when parked, video cameras on buses, office building/space for transportation department, furnishings for office, technology and etc.

In addition to the start-up cost, Jordan said the annual cost for a school bus transportation in Tullahoma would be approximately $2.5 million, based on the numbers from the study at the time.

Besides the fiscal costs, the study also highlighted the challenges TCS would face as a district. These challenges included: locating finding drivers, which was something the school system had struggled with until recently, land to house the bus fleet, changing the start times for schools, additional after school work, setting up a new system for student discipline on buses, the impact the weather will have to openings and closing with more buses on the roads and the neighborhood roads not being configured for optimal bus use, which was something that the drivers expressed concerns about. 

“When we were doing some of this research and having these conversations, we received feedback from current drivers saying, ‘How would we maneuver these roads? Has anyone stopped to think about how challenging that would be to navigate a very large bus on some of our roadways where they have difficulty now maneuvering when a car is coming toward them,’ that kind of thing,” Stephens said.

The study also listed benefits to the school system having a bus transportation system. The benefits included students in school zones having access to transportation daily to get to school and home; rezoning schools to meet the demands of growing areas; job creation; and a possible decline in truancy numbers. 

Knowledge for the future

Given that there were questions now and again about a bus system, Stephens said the motivation to have the study was to be able to have an idea for an answer versus just giving a hypothetical answer.

“I wouldn’t have a way of telling you just so you actually have to do some type of study to say, so in the real world what would this look like?” Stephens said. “So, it just seemed an appropriate step to take to be more informed and not speaking so hypothetically ‘it’s expensive’.”

Now with an idea of how expensive a bus system would be, as well as the other non-fiscal challenges, the school system now has the knowledge to be able to prioritize what was important for the district, like making sure there’s adequate teaching and learning space for students, which will have its own significant costs going in the millions.

“It was really about more informing and understanding, to be more credible in responses and knowledgeable,” Stephens said. “We really were trying to look at it more comprehensively. Cost was the big thing, we wanted to understand what that might look like, but we also wanted to look at it overall.”

Now with that knowledge in hand, Stephens said the district is always open to revisit the topic of a bus system, as well as thinking about what situations may be coming down the line, what they may want to consider to address those situations and how to possibly explore and figure out potential solutions with all the information available to them. 

Vote in our poll if you would approve of the school district implementing a full bus system here.