News Release: February 2, 2010

At the request of its ten local school districts, the Washtenaw Intermediate School District is coordinating an effort to develop a countywide consolidated transportation model.

Teams of individuals from the school districts in Washtenaw County will carry out the design work. Consultants from the Xavier Leadership Center in Ohio and Transportation Strategies, LLC of Indiana will facilitate the teams.

The team members are charged with designing a more efficient, consolidated transportation model that will generate cost savings in the 18%-25% range by:

• standardization of buses, fuel systems, processes and supplies
• centralization of facilities, administration and overhead
• optimization of routing, staging, inventory strategies and industry best practices, and
• budgetary control of compensation and benefits.

“It will be a multi-step process,” explained WISD Superintendent Dr. William C. Miller. “First we’ll determine our needs and design a model to meet those needs. Then the local school districts will decide if the model can be adapted internally or if it will need to be sent out for a bid.”

The design will be based on countywide participation but ultimately each district will have to determine the extent of its participation. Miller noted that districts in Washtenaw County already cooperate or share services in more than 87 different areas. “An example of shared services is our system for substitutes,” Miller noted. As a group, districts participate in that service operated by the Professional Educational Services Group, LLC.

He confirmed that even more shared services are being considered. There is a pilot project underway in Ypsilanti and Lincoln—and soon Willow Run—to look at sharing central office/administrative services. And, WISD is already processing payroll for the Chelsea and Manchester school districts; and providing full accounting services for New Beginnings and Washtenaw Technical Middle College public school academies and C.O.P.E., an alternative education program.

“To be fiscally responsible, our schools must look at all possibilities,” he said. And those possibilities could be district-wide, region-wide or county-wide. “Each local district’s ultimate responsibility is teaching and learning,” Miller said. “And, our goal is to help them manage scarce resources in ways that maximize programming and opportunities for students.”

WISD is a regional education service agency that works with the public schools in Ann Arbor, Chelsea, Dexter,Lincoln, Manchester, Milan, Saline, Whitmore Lake, Willow Run, and Ypsilanti to promote continuous improvement of achievement for all students.