The Carroll County School District is one of 11 districts featured in a recent report by the state Legislature on increases in transportation costs related to deficient bridge infrastructure.
According to the report, released Monday by the legislature’s joint committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review (PEER), the state of Carroll County’s bridges has cost the district just over $12,000 in detour-related costs over the course of the 2014-15 school year.
The study, completed in November, considered the 11 districts in the state that have more than 10 deficient bridges within their boundaries.
Bridges were classified as deficient if they were closed to all vehicles or had posted weight limits that could apply to buses.
Of those 11 districts, four — Carroll County, Jones County, Hollandale and North Panola — reported having to redraw school bus routes to take buses around rather than over deficient bridges.
The PEER report estimated that when maintenance costs are taken into account, it costs about $1.70 per mile to operate a school bus in Mississippi. Using that figure, the report estimated that detours cost Carroll County schools almost $10,000 in the 2014-15 school year.
Carroll County was also the only one of the four districts that pays bus drivers an hourly wage rather than an annual salary. The report estimated that the additional time spent detouring cost the district an additional $2,250 in personnel costs.
Total detour-related costs accounted for 2 percent of the district’s total transportation expenditures over the 2013-14 school year, a higher portion than in any of the other three districts.
According to the 2015 National Bridge Index, it will cost an estimated $588,000 to repair or replace the two deficient bridges currently affecting the district’s routing.
Carroll County Superintendent Billy Joe Ferguson said he had not yet seen the report and was unaware of the precise financial impact of detouring on the district, although he did say that transportation had been an issue.
“When you can’t cross a bridge, you have to go around,” said Ferguson, who lays the blame for the current state of Carroll County’s infrastructure at the feet of Gov. Phil Bryant.
“He’s against education, he’s against medicine and he’s against transportation,” said Ferguson.
The report also found that in general “the process for notifying school districts of deficient bridges and the training of school district transportation personnel related to deficient bridges needs improvement.”
Ferguson said that the Carroll County Board of Supervisors and the county engineer have been coordinating with the school district and providing information and warnings about specific bridges.
The superintendent said that since a bridge collapsed in the northeast part of the county earlier this year, a temporary bridge has been erected in its place, and buses are once again able to cross it.
• Contact Nick Rogers at 581-7235 or nrogers@gwcommonwealth.com.
The original version of this article inadvertently omitted the estimated cost per mile to operate a school bus in Mississippi.
