Buses set to make return to Rankin for school year
Extended contract means the Pulaarvik Kablu Friendship Centre will keep bus service
Candace Thomson
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, July 16, 2014
RANKIN INLET
The threat of students in Rankin Inlet being forced to carpool or walk to school in the cold has been thwarted, for now.
George Dunkerley says the Pulaarvik Kablu Friendship Centre will continue to run two school buses in October. - Darrell Greer/NNSL photo |
George Dunkerley, executive director with the Pulaarvik Kablu Friendship Centre, was able to confirm in an email to Kivalliq News this week that the District Education Authority has extended the contract for the centre to continue the bus service for one year.
"Pulaarvik will maintain the busing service for Rankin Inlet through the 2014-15 school year," he wrote.
"We will continue to operate two school buses and anticipate a start date on or about Oct. 13."
Stan Anderson with the District Education Authority in Rankin Inlet said July 10 the authority was working with the territorial government when news broke that the buses might not run next year.
"The department was working with us and they were able to come up with increased funding levels, so we went back to the friendship centre and they've accepted it for another year - that solves the short-term issue," Anderson said.
It is unclear what will become of the service after the 2014-15 school year, but during a public ministers' meeting in late June Education Minister Paul Aarulaaq Quassa said the service was a priority of the department.
"We want to ensure that all of our students have access to busing and we know that it was posing an issue here," Quassa said.
"We want to assure Rankin Inlet that busing will be available for the next school year and that it is being worked on for the future."
Anderson said the department confirmed with the education authority that they were issuing a request for proposals to see if a new organization would like to run the service.
"I don't know when it'll be out, but hopefully soon so any prospective applicants have time to do their homework and find out how it would work," he said.
"Luckily this year's extension has given us some breathing room of a year."
The Pulaarvik centre has run the service since 2004, and buses between 200 and 250 students a day from when the cold begins in October until the spring.
In June, Dunkerley said there are some students who live anywhere between one-half to three quarters of a mile from school and that the bus service is crucial to those students.
Dunkerley didn't respond by press time to the question of how much the contract costs per year and Anderson was unable to say exactly how much, saying it depended on a number of factors.
"We give them the money and they break it down per day and they bill us for the number of days the bus is actually running," he said.
"A lot depends on fuel costs, driver availability, regular maintenance, damage, vandalism costs and those kinds of things.
"People with that class of licence are in demand at the mine sites so I would imagine the cost to attract to and attain drivers has gone up over the past several years too."
Regardless of the cost, Anderson reiterated that the service is crucial for the safety of Rankin's students.
"In the depths of winter when it's really, really cold it doesn't take long for something horrible to happen with someone who's wandering and once the effects of hypothermia start setting in poor decisions get made and a bad decision can get even worse very quickly," he said.
"It doesn't matter if it's one kilometre or 10, it's an issue."
