Aging fleet of buses limits field trips

Macon County students will be taking fewer out-of-state trips this year until the school system has a plan in place for its activity buses. At the Aug, 17 Macon County Board of Education meeting, Transportation Director Mike Bale reported the school system's aging bus fleet can't handle out-of-state trips any longer. "I'm going to put it bluntly … at this time, we cannot keep offering the same services that we offer these children without some sort of capital replacement plan," he said. "Until we can come up with that plan, we need to figure out how to minimize costs before something drastic happens." Rising costs and diminished funding contribute to the issue, and Bale said the solution will not be as simple as buying cheaper parts. He noted the department's current procedures are "statistically proven" to maximize savings. Instead, rising costs for fuel, buses and parts are placing strain on an increasingly slim budget. "From September of 2025 I purchased fuel at $2.42 per gallon. As of May 2026, we are currently paying $4.03 per gallon," Bale said. "That is a 66% increase. Any activity bus we send out, the first tank of fuel comes out of my budget. If they need a second tank that entity pays for it, whether it's sports or whatever program." The five preferred buses for long-distance travel each has a 90-gallon tank. When a yellow bus breaks down, Bale said he can have a spare bus and mechanic dispatched and the children on the way home within 20 minutes, but when an activity bus breaks down it's moving faster, is often on the interstate and is not always in North Carolina. When a bus breaks down in-state, the system can rely on a team and network of transportation professionals to respond and get the bus back on the road. But when a bus breaks down in Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Florida, as the buses have been going on wider-ranging trips in the last few years, the vehicles are at greater risk of mechanical failure far away from the network. The buses are often carrying student athletes, band members, and thousands of dollars of equipment. "Nobody can predict a mechanical failure," Bale said. Macon County Schools has 18 activity buses, one of which is offline. All usable buses are scheduled, and the department does not have "room to lose a bus," Bale said. The buses have an average of 126,000 miles, which he said places the fleet at a greater statistical risk of a breakdown. The parts at risk in that range have a shelf life which cannot be affected by maintenance and the system lacks the state emergency funding MCS has for its yellow bus fleet. The state helps provide free buses that aren't being used by other school systems, but Bale said the systems never give away their best buses, the ones the system could get would have the same problems as its current fleet. "126,000 miles means we're sending our students across state lines in vehicles that have passed the mechanical peak," Bale said. Breakdowns across state lines drives up costs with high heavy-duty towing fees, rescue bus dispatch and potential hotel costs for students depending on the breakdown. "If this happens at midnight on a holiday or weekend, multiply that cost by 20% to 50%," he said. "Orlando, Florida, 563 miles away. Depending on whether they're one of our small gas buses or the diesel bus, it's going to cost you $6,000 to $10,000 to get that bus back home. The other option is to leave the bus down there and pay somebody else to fix it. The average is $120 to $175 per hour plus your wait time for parts." Bale recommended that MCS implement an age or mile policy for the activity bus fleet, but he said the issue comes from the system's lack of funding and the expense of new buses, which is projected to increase from $169,000 to $220,000 in the next two years. Nantahala and Highlands both need new buses, and Bale does not have one he can give them. He said the county's two oldest activity buses are still safe, but should not be driven even outside the county, and in a perfect world he would purchase four buses at that $169,000 price tag to meet the system's needs. In North Carolina, school districts receive some funding for yellow buses and some maintenance staff, Bale said, and white activity buses are paid for with local funding. The district has historically relied on capital outlay funding from Macon County to purchase a new activity bus, but in 2026-27 Bale said those funds are unavailable. "To be transparent, activity buses used for athletics and other extracurricular programs are not a necessity in the same way that support vehicles for Maintenance, IT and Food Services are. However, they are an important resource for our students and programs," Bale said. "I do not want to see all the great things we offer these kids taken away … but this is where we're at now," he said. "There's something I ask myself every weekend, especially when we get to a playoff season: 'What is your plan when you have a sports team stranded on the side of the interstate at midnight?' That turns me gray and I lose a lot of sleep over it, but that's something I don't' have." The state's standard for fleet vehicles is 10 to 15 years before they need to be retired, and Bale said he would prefer to stay on the 15-year end of that range. "We have been fortunate that we have not yet had to deal with a major incident involving an activity bus that occurred out of state or a significant distance from home. However, that is a situation we cannot assume will continue," Bale said. "The reality is that we do not know when or where a serious breakdown, accident or other incident will occur. If one of our activity buses is hundreds of miles away, we need to have confidence that the vehicle is reliable enough to get our students and staff home safely or that we have a dependable way to respond when something goes wrong." The board agreed to begin a discussion about a replacement plan at its next meeting. During the meeting, the board approved a slate of overnight trip requests for students from September 2026 to April 2027. However, for out-of-state requests board Chair Jim Breedlove said he is not willing to send activity buses out of state until a replacement plan is in place. A cross-country trip to Spartanburg, S.C., Franklin High agriculture trips to Dillard, Indianapolis and Louisville, K.Y., and a Highlands School trip to Charleston were approved "pending transportation approval" in the hopes the schools will be able to find alternative ways to get students to the events, especially for events which may only have a few students scheduled to go. Shelby Powell can be reached at reporter@thefranklinpress.com

Aging fleet of buses limits field trips

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