During a special board meeting on May 31, 2022, the Lyle School District Board of Education approved Lyle School District working with White Salmon Valley and Klickitat School districts in developing a transportation co-op. 

Staff pay, benefits and other specifics pertaining to transportation employees will be bargained with the Public School Employees local. Our bus drivers have done a valiant job of covering multiple routes this past year. With the input of our drivers and their union representation, we expect the co-op to ultimately provide more stable work conditions, benefiting our drivers as well as students, instructional staff and families.

The approved co-op agreement provides for the operational, managerial and organizational functions of the three districts' transportation functions. This includes route scheduling, reporting mileage to the state, providing an official dispatch center and other non-driving activities.  The maintenance and repair of district buses has been handled by the White Salmon Valley School District bus garage since 2018 and will continue under this agreement. 

There are multiple reasons for pursuing the co-op arrangement.

• Reflecting the hiring issues widespread across the country, Lyle School District has had difficulties keeping enough drivers on staff to cover all four routes and transportation for multiple extracurricular activities. Students, particularly those riding the "Panda" route to and from Dallesport/Murdock have been delayed throughout the school year. Parents' schedules and plans have been disrupted, too. Although the district has recruited heavily, it has picked up only two additional drivers during the school year, one of whom is not fully licensed yet. The district lost several drivers in the same time frame.
• Training, testing and licensing a new bus driver is a complicated process. It typically takes two to three months if the prospective driver has no previous commercial driving experience.  Lyle School District sends new potential drivers to Vancouver for training and testing. The co-op, using White Salmon’s current process, will conduct training and testing on site and will be able to complete the process more quickly. 
• Lyle School District has not had a transportation manager since last fall. The position has changed radically in the past few years, due in part to the nature of new buses.  Like cars, they now require high-tech diagnostics, maintenance and repair equipment, which requires special training.  Where the district's transportation manager once performed mechanical work on the district's buses, it's now almost incredibly difficult to find someone with those skills willing to work part-time. To find such a person who could perform the other parts of the job – the paperwork, state reporting, routing and so on -- is even harder. The co-op will provide all of these functions.
• Transportation funding from the state has long been inadequate for small, rural districts. However a co-op receives far more stable and predictable funding due to state rules. As before, levy funding received from our property owners will be used to fill in where state funding to the district is inadequate.
• But ultimately, this decision is about our students and their education. Neither our staff, administration nor board want to put students and families through another year in similar circumstances. Students need to be in school on time to learn with their peers. Families need to depend on buses being on time and running regularly. 

Watch for more news about our new co-op throughout the summer.