Toledo Board of Education members approved a nearly $10 million contract Tuesday to renovate its transportation hub, which will include space for its new commercial driver's license training area.
During its public meeting, the board voted 4-0 to award a $9,898,782 contract to the lowest bidder, Crestline Paving and Excavating Co. Inc. of Toledo. The company is expected to create a more modernized driving area near Rogers High School for a CDL training program, which will open to students at the start of the next school year.
Board members didn't discuss the program specifically, instead approving it among a list of consent agenda items.
District officials say the CDL program will allow seniors to avoid the roughly $5,000 training cost for similar training by other organizations. They can also then apply for high-paying driving jobs immediately after graduation.
After the meeting, Jim Gault, the school district’s executive transformational leader of curriculum, said renovations will likely begin in the next few weeks — weather permitting — so that the necessary paving will be complete before the start of the school year. That is when the program's first 25 seniors begin training.
The classes are already filling up fast.
“We already have a list of students who are interested and so we'll be scheduling them into the various classes,” Mr. Gault said. “And eventually, that 25 number [of students] will increase as we go through it and the program becomes more popular, and maybe we'll even start allowing more juniors to go through it as well.”
Toledo City Council members in February approved the district’s renovation plans for its transportation hub after initially rejecting it in April, 2022, mostly because of concerns regarding the district’s plan to create a propane storage and distribution site at the transportation hub.
Unlike diesel, propane is stored above ground, and there were various safety and building regulations the district must pass first before it can begin renovations to its transportation hub.
Doing so is part of the district’s plan to switch from diesel buses to ones that run on propane. Switching the district’s 186 buses to an all-propane fleet is estimated to save more than $1 million a year. To help the district along, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded it $750,000 in October toward the purchase of 25 new, propane-fueled school buses.
The district’s assistant superintendent, Jim Gant, said after the meeting the plan is to finish renovations for the CDL program first, while the propane portion will extend through the end of 2023.
Board member Bob Vasquez was absent from the meeting.
First Published April 25, 2023, 11:19 p.m.
