SHAWANO, WI- Monday marked the official end of the school year with the teachers at Hillcrest and Olga Brener returning all of the students belongings.
To observe social distancing, staff members boarded 15 buses filled with a bag for each student, and dropped them off at each families doorstep.
“We had bags for about 40-50 kids on our busses,” said Matt Peterson, Olga Brener Dean of Students. Peterson was on one of the busses that traveled to home in the city limits.
“We started at 7:30 and we were mostly done by 11:00.”
The buses also traveled to the homes of students who live outside of the city, but still within the school district boundaries. To to that, Jess Tipton of Kobussen Busses said they had to do all kinds of planning.
“We have about 80 hours worth of routing.”
Tipon said it started with getting all of the addresses.
“We take the students list and we upload it into the software,” Tipton said. “It turns each address into a dot and then it is kind of like connect the dots.”
Tipton said in a way, it was like starting from scratch because their bus routes during the school year to do go door to door.
“This was a challenge to be able to find the homes of some of the students that we are not used to going to.”
Once the routes were drawn up, Kobussen worked with the school district to determine how much help was needed on each bus.
“We planned more help in town because there are more students in a smaller area,” Tipton said.
The busses that stayed in town covered a lot of ground in a short period of time.
“In town they just parked in the middle of one block, take care of both sides and then move on to the next block.”
Peterson said the school district made sure they did the dropoffs safely by wearing PPE and keeping at least six feet apart from others.
“We were knocking on doors and ringing doorbells and if nobody answered we just left them there,” Peterson said. “If they did answer, we would just drop the bags off and back away.”
Tipton said the buses that went out of the city did not have as many people or bags because it required more driving time. Tipton says while it was a lot of work, it was worth it for many reasons.
“We are educational partners with the school and the best thing we can do is work with them to make sure all of our students have what they need,” Tipton said. “That means we run busses for materials and we are willing to do whatever we can to help the school.”
She said it was also good for many of the drivers. Tipton said they tried their best to keep their drivers on close to the same routes that they normally drive.
“This was a way that some of them could at least go and see the houses,” she explained. “The drivers are really excited to be able to be utilized for something because they really miss their kids.”
The Middle and High School are still working out their plans and process for getting the left behind belongings to their students.
Comments From Jess Tipton of Kobussen
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