Transportation staff at Muncie Community Schools say the district is ready for the start of the school year on August 6.  As IPR’s Stephanie Wiechmann reports, that’s as the school board discussed this year’s contract with the same bus service that caught community ire last year.

The name Auxilio Services was made famous last year when Muncie Community Schools had to cancel days two and three of the school year because of massive busing problems with its new bus transportation provider.

District emergency manager Steve Edwards says this year will be different.

“The first day of school is always rough.  We get questions, we get concerns, people are angry, and it’s never perfect.  But what we want to ensure is that we don’t have an opening like we had last year.”

MCS signed a five year contract with Auxilio, but the details can be adjusted each year.  On Tuesday night, the board saw the contract for the 2018-19 school year will cost nearly $2.2 million.

And there’s one big change.

“Now we are only transporting eight Northside students.”

The rest of the students from Northside Middle School needing to take a bus home will take a MITS bus.  The city’s transportation company has already been busing students at Southside Middle School and Central High School.

MITS General Manager Larry King says those Northside students could make downtown Muncie even more busy in the afternoons, because –

“To accommodate the students and for us to be able to transport them, we do need for them to transfer at our MITS station.”

MITS has to follow federal rules to receive some federal money it uses to operate.  The rules prevent it from operating solely as a student transport service.  To get around this, students will ride a MITS route to the downtown station in the morning and then be sent to Northside.  At the end of the day, it will look similar.

“Our buses will be staged at the school property to bring them back downtown.”

The district’s transportation director and Auxilio have been handing out personalized orange cards to every student’s family at school registration events.  These list a student’s exact bus route and the time their bus will arrive – including students who will ride a MITS bus.  Auxilio says drivers will be contacting parents next week.  They’ll also do dry runs of all its bus routes and see where changes need to be made before August 6.

The school board says parents with bus questions can call Auxilio at any time at 765-201-4254.