By Bob Ippel Executive Director Rehoboth Christian School
S
chools like to invest their funds in teachers and curriculum that lead directly to student learning. However, at Rehoboth Christian School, one of the most overlooked costs has to do with transportation—especially with a bus fleet of second hand vehicles that need constant repair. In the four months between October 2019 and January 2020, the six-bus Rehoboth fleet experienced 10 breakdowns. Altogether, the aging buses required an average of $83,500 in repairs and maintenance annually. Yet the school depends on these vehicles, putting on 234,000 miles each year while serving students and families from an area of 3,000 square miles. Rehoboth needed new buses, but how could the school ever afford six new buses at one time—something that had never happened during Rehoboth’s entire 118-year history. But then came the news that money was available for the purchase of new buses from a settlement in the Volkswagen emission scandal known as “Dieselgate”. For Rehoboth, that news could not have come at a better time. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency Website, Volkswagen had violated the Clean Air Act (CAA) by the sale of approximately 590,000 model year 2009 to 2016
50 November 2020
