County gets 20 new school buses

Published 12:00 am Thursday, July 18, 2002

Out with the old and in with the new.

It’s an old adage, which the Dallas County School system seems to have adopted lately.

Aside from recently naming a new principal at Southside High School, the school system also announced it had purchased twenty new buses at its board meeting on Tuesday.

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Assistant Dallas County School System Superintendent Freeman Waller said the school system purchased the new buses to replace older 1988 and 1989 models, models which he said were “old and needed replacing.”

The cost for the buses, said Waller, totals approximately $1 million dollars, which the school system hopes to pay off within four to five years.

Waller added that the buses would be distributed throughout different zones in the school system, with nine of them being in the southern zone, seven in the northern zone and four in the western zone.

Aside from purchasing new buses, the buses themselves will also have a new feature –stop arms.

“All the new buses and the old buses will have them,” said Waller, noting that adding the newest feature to the old buses was an idea formulated by the school system.

“We are not required by law to have them on the older ones,” Waller said. “But we really did feel there was a need for it.” Waller noted that the school system had acquired a state grant to purchase the bus arms for the older models.

Kenneth Holyfield, the supervisor for the bus shop, which holds and maintains buses for the school system, said he was pleased that the system had finally brought in the new buses.

“I’m glad they finally purchased them,” said Holyfield. “We’ve been waiting for them for quite a few years, and we’re glad that they’re finally here.”