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New Pupil Transportation Facility: Rolling Along After 70 years of service on New York Avenue, the Pupil Transportation Services Maintenance Facility, home to a fleet of 761 yellow school buses, is going green. Scheduled to re-open in June 2010, on Harpers Road, the new facility is the first building of its kind in the country, featuring as it does the use of solar, wind, and geothermal energy resources. “This building continues to reinforce the school division’s commitment to the environment, as the structure will also earn the distinction of being designated a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) building,” said David Pace, Director of Transportation Services. LEED is a third party certification program developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. The six categories of certification are: Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, Energy and Atmosphere, Materials and Resources, Indoor Environmental Quality, and Innovation in Design. The new facility will include four wind turbines to collect wind energy, a rainwater collection system to flush toilets and wash buses, solar thermal panels on the roof, and a geothermal heating and cooling system for the administration building.
Source: Green Building Facts. U.S. Green Building Council Tim Cole, VBCPS Sustainable Schools Project Manager and Chairman of the Sustainable Schools Committee, describes one of the facility’s environmentally friendly features this way: “All of the rainwater that lands on the roof will be collected and stored in an underground cistern. This water will be used to flush all of the toilets in the building, with the exception of the waterless urinals. The estimated water savings is one million gallons a year,” he said. According to the U.S. Green Building Council, U.S. buildings account for 38.9 percent of the nation’s primary energy use, 72 percent of electricity consumption and they use 15 trillion gallons of water a year. Reduced maintenance and operation costs as well as lower utility bills are among the benefits of building green. “A typical school this size will cost the city approximately $500,000 a year in utility cost. This building should cost 30-50 percent less to operate,” Cole said. VBCPS is dedicated to building green. In 2005, the renovated Hermitage Elementary School became the first LEED K-12 certified building in Hampton Roads, one of 60 schools across the nation. Future LEED certification projects under construction include the new Renaissance Academy and Virginia Beach Middle School, both scheduled to open January 2010. Another middle school, Great Neck, is slated for a “green” replacement. A groundbreaking ceremony for the new school is scheduled for this fall and the projected completion of this LEED-designed building is winter 2011. Mechanics and maintenance staff at the Pupil Transportation Services Maintenance Facility are excited about the move to Harpers Road. “Although our main garage on New York Avenue has served us well over 70 years, this new facility will greatly enhance the work environment and provide a better work flow for the maintenance staff that typically services 20 vehicles a day. In addition, on any given day staff will perform an average of five emergency repair operations,” said Pace. Robert Clinebell, fleet manager for VBCPS, explains that at the current facility the technicians have to walk to the other side of the building to get parts. “With the new layout, we’ll have parts closer to our technicians. From an operational standpoint, the new building will make it much easier,” he said, “because the new facility will be designed to create a work-flow conducive to increased productivity.” According to Pace, “The administrative staff is now housed in ‘trailers’ on Leroy Road that are old, outdated, dark, cramped, and subject to serious flooding every time it rains. Work space is small and congested. The new facility will provide open, full work spaces for all employees with updated technologies and equipment,” he added. “From personal experience, morale goes up and that adds to productivity,” Clinebell said. With the many technological upgrades the division’s school buses have received, the New York Avenue garage is past its prime. “The garage facilities are so old they do not allow for us to buy newer, transit style school buses because they will not fit into the garage bays and the lifts are not designed to hold the weight,” Pace said. “Now, we’ll have ample storage space for parts and supplies that will make them convenient to the technicians. The working spaces are larger and provide the employees with all the updated equipment and technologies they need to work on today’s school buses,” he continued. Clinebell noted that the Harpers Road facility will have advanced computer technology and a wireless Internet connection throughout the building. “We will take advantage of the new technology,” he said. Opening just in time for summer 2011, technicians also look forward to indoor relief from the heat. “This old facility does not have climate control in the building and the technicians must endure significantly high temperatures in the summer months. The new facility will provide a climate controlled environment that will make working conditions in the winter and the summer much more comfortable,” Pace said. “Even though the New York Avenue garage has been a place they call ‘home’ and will be truly missed, they’re counting the days until they can move their tools into their sparkling new home,” Pace said. Once the new facility is in full operation, the current building will be demolished. The location will become a parking lot for reserve school buses. “Traffic congestion around this area will be reduced because ‘drive-in’ maintenance will be re-located to Harper’s Road,” Pace said. You may be unaware that Beach students didn’t always catch the familiar yellow school bus in the morning. In the early 20’s when the city of Virginia Beach was a small strip of land close to the oceanfront and the rest of what we now know as Virginia Beach was actually Princess Anne County, school children traveled to Courthouse Elementary in a canvas covered wagon drawn by two horses. Five years later, Tunstall Napoleon McClanan, through a contract with the county, purchased the county’s first Chevrolet school bus. Students attending Kempsville High School traveled to class by way of a steam train to Euclia which is now the Kempsville building materials area on Witchduck Road. From that point, students headed to Oceana High School, then caught an electric train from Euclia to Oceana. The current Pupil Transportation Services Maintenance Facility is located at the former Oceana High School site. In 1939, the same year that the New York Avenue garage opened, National School Bus Chrome Yellow was adopted nationwide. Officials agreed that yellow would be recognizable in all 48 states and provide the best safety precaution against hazardous weather. Today, VBCPS school buses carry 62,000 students and travel an average of 10 million miles in a single school year. “With our buses collectively traveling about 53,000 miles a day, we depend on having the best possible resources on hand to service and maintain our fleet. This is necessary to offer a dependable means of transportation for all students and provide ‘peace of mind’ for every parent who places his or her child on board one of our school buses,” Pace added.
Meet
Dushani Starks |
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The Department
of Media and Communications Development (MCD) was fortunate in having
the services of college student Dushani Starks for several months this
summer. Dushani Starks is a senior at George Mason University majoring
in communications with a business minor. She began her college career
at Barton College in Wilson, North Carolina, and later transferred to
George Mason. While in college she has worked as a reporter for The
Collegiate, the campus newspaper at Barton, and also as a program
assistant in the Office of Alcolhol, Drug and Health Education at George
Mason, working on special projects and maintaining health education
advertising in seven academic buildings on campus. As Vice President
of the George Mason Exercise and Nutrition Club, she also assisted in
event planning for the GMU Health and Fitness Expo and implemented the
efforts of a marketing team to recruit new members to the organization.
Check out her articles in this edition of e-Kaleidoscope: New
Pupil Transportation Facility: Rolling Along and VB Teachers SAIL into
History. She also contributed to the In the Spotlight: Winners of the
Superintendent’s Spotlight Award and Movin’ On Up stories.