The Portland Public Schools are scheduled to open at regular start
times on Friday, January 9, 2015, with a bus fueling issue that led to
the closure of schools on Thursday resolved.
“We’re confident
we’ll be able to safely transport all our students to school tomorrow at
the regularly scheduled time,” Portland Public Schools Director of
Transportation Kevin Whittemore said.
Schools were closed
Thursday, January 8, because of a busing issue. “We had to cancel school
because we were unable to fuel our compressed natural gas (CNG) buses,”
Whittemore said. “But Metro has worked diligently with us to resolve
the problem.”
Metro is the region’s public bus system and has the
only CNG fueling station in the state. However, that fueling station
was out of service due to a power surge.
The Portland Public
Schools has 14 CNG buses, which is more than half its fleet of 26 buses.
The district was concerned that some of its buses might run out of fuel
and leave students stranded in the bitterly cold weather. Buses burn
more fuel in the cold.
“With the temperature almost at 10 below
zero early in the morning when we made the decision to close school,
hypothermia would have been a concern if students had to wait on stopped
buses for an extended period of time,” Whittemore said.
Metro
was expected to bring extra fuel from Boston on Thursday afternoon to be
able to fuel both its own fleet and the district’s buses. Should that
not happen, the Portland Public Schools has put a contingency plan in
place to use buses from other school districts and third-party
contractors.
Portland Public Schools Superintendent Emmanuel
Caulk praised the district’s bus drivers and other Transportation
Department staff, some of whom arrived at 4 a.m. on Thursday morning to
fuel the buses.
“We are the largest school district in the state
and we have the best transportation department,” Caulk said. “Our staff
safely transports about 3,500 students daily – about half our student
population. We are taking steps with our partner Metro to ensure that in
the future our buses will be able to get the fuel they need, and we’re
confident we’ll be able to have buses on the road tomorrow to get our
students to school.”