Robbinsville – After 24 years and an innumerable amount of repair work, Graham County Schools has taken steps to replace the transportation department’s bus lift.
At Dec. 3’s board of education meeting, transportation director Adam Harkins spoke of a Sept. 23 incident that could have ended in tragedy. Harkins said the lift collapsed with a bus on it at the district’s garage, but noted that no one was injured and damage was limited.
Harkins distributed a handout to each board member and said the existing lift was installed in August 2000. While searching for a replacement, he said Asheville-based Isgett Distributors was the only company who provided a quote, which includes sending out a contractor to repair the floor and the mount.
After an insurance payout, Graham County Schools will be responsible for an estimated $10,000-$12,000 of the $58,570.04 replacement cost.
The board voted 5-0 to approve the expense.
Harkins also said the system’s two new activity buses had arrived from Greensboro-based Carolina Thomas, and that the transportation department was both completing paperwork for tags and prepping the 64-passenger vehicles to hit the road.
The board approved a 10-year loan to purchase the buses at its Oct. 1 meeting, after an unknown school district elsewhere in the state ordered the transports – only to never pick them up. The collective amount of the loan is $291,846.
Other news & notes
* Facilities director David Matheson said at the meeting that the closing date on the future site of a new Robbinsville Elementary School was Friday, Dec. 20. The district is purchasing 6.04 acres of property surrounding the current Robbinsville High baseball field from the Orr family, at a cost of $230,000. Graham County Schools received a $42 million grant from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction to build the structure earlier this year; the preliminary idea is to construct a two-story institution.
* Matheson announced that a sign would be placed at the “new” entrance to Robbinsville Middle/High schools, which opened to traffic off Rodney Orr Bypass in November 2019.