Warren County School District has extended its contract with Durham School Services for another year.
The school system entered into a $1.52 million contract with Durham in 2016. That agreement was for three years and contained two, 1-year renewals.
“We are looking to extend that contract,” said Director of Schools Grant Swallows. “This will be the second extension. We are asking you to approve that for the last time. This time next year, or actually a little earlier than that, we would go out for bids on the contract completely. We are asking the board to choose the second extension agreement for Durham School Services.”
The request to extend was made of Warren County School Board members.
“There is one addition to the contract,” said Swallows. “We’ve asked the company to give us read-only access to their student management system. I want you to be aware of what that is. We’re just looking for an easier way for our staff to look at zoning and we can do that through their data management system. We spoke one day last week and they are working to provide that for us. We appreciate them doing that for us.”
Durham has been the school’s transportation provider since 2011.
Bobby Cox, former director of schools, says Durham was instrumental in the school system’s effort to provide meals to students after the school year was interrupted by COVID-19 in mid-March.
“Durham has helped out tremendously with the feeding program,” said Cox. “We started out running three sites. They transported food to the Kids of the Community site, to the Hamilton Street Activity Center site and to the Morrison site. Then, we expanded that into 10 bus routes, so they ran 10 bus routes with bus stops in addition to those three each day. Monday, Wednesday and Friday they were transporting meals via bus to scheduled bus stops in each of the school zone areas. We ended up, on average, close to 10,000 meals – breakfast and lunch. Durham did a great job helping us out. I don’t think we could have gotten to that point without them.”
Warren County School Board members unanimously approved extending Durham School Services contract for one year.
