Sanger Courier (Sanger, Tex.), Vol. 99, No. 56, Ed. 1 Thursday, November 19, 1998 Page: 1 of 16
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Chuck Tucker
consoles his
son Adam,
after the J
Indians losjfl
to Ifl
Coinnu?rc<|g
19-13, in ®
the first
See story on
page 8.
of the
playoffs. 1
Adam, is .
one of 21
seniors,
Sanger’s
football
team will
lose to
graduation.
Heartbreaker!
I
By Lisa Hardy
tz
L'
T
(Continued on page 4)
IM
98
city’s new code enforcement
(Continued on page 4)
Ti
s vsi
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2/
V.w
'V- rXi.
Salary comparison
for area bus drivers
Beautification Board
considers new tradition
Councilman Mike James'
questioned how the landscape
ordinance would be policed.
“I think it’s good. 1 think we
need strict guidelines like this,
but I see a problem. We need to
put a process in place, if we’re
The condition of city streets, a
landscaping project for the
walkover and plans for new
holiday decorations were among
items discussed during the Nov. 9
meeting of tfie city of Sanger
Beautification Board.
According to Sue Trego,
chairwoman of the Beautification
Board, work on a project to
landscape the area around the
Interstate-35 walkover should
begin shortly. Plans call for the
installation of the sprinkler
system to be done in time to have
the landscape completed before
spring
3, SF-4, 2-Family (duplex),
Multi-Family (MF)-l, MF-2,
Mobile Home (MH)-l and MH-
2.
“This whole project will
gVeatly enhance the area around
the walkover,” Trego stated.
The board then was notified
that the entrance sign south of the
city had been redone and that the
lighting had been fixed. The
Mddern Era Department of the
Wednesday Study Club, has been
picking up trash in that area,
Trego reported.
Beautification Board member
Elizabeth Higgs reported to her
peers on the board that in
observance of Nov. 16 being Earth
Awareness Day, members of the
1 (Continued on pg. 4)
t>
City gets tough
Kb ,
A REAL BORE -
Construction
workers with
Dickerson
Construction
Co. are in the
A last stages of
boring under
Interstate 35 in
order to install
a new 18-inch
sewer line to
improve
drainage in the
area.
✓ -
school district after the season
ends. In the meantime, however,
the district is caught between a
rock and a hard place because, as
McGuire said, “We want the best
drivers we can get.”
“That CDL makes them
much more marketable,”
Holloway confirmed. “'I'llere are
private companies - couriers,
delivery and over-the-road
transportation - that will pay
higher, and with the growth in
the area and around Alliance,
there are opportunities.”
In a survey recently
published in School Bus Fleet
magazine, the two top concerns
in school districts nationwide
regarding transportation are
high turnover rates and student
management and discipline.
Denfon 1SD has addressed
the student management/disci-
pline concern by leaching bus
drivers student management
and discipline techniques, he
said. And efforts are under way
to turn the tide on high turnover
rates, he added.
For instance, in August 1997,
the Denton ISI) raised the
starting hourly rate for bus
drivers from $7.29 per hour to $9
per hour. Some drivers in other
districts, he said, start as high as
$11 -$14 per hour, depending on
their level of experience.
Also, the Denton 1SD began
offering drivers who work a
minimum of 30 hours a week
fully paid school district benefit^
including medical.
According to Holloway, bus
drivers ui the Denton ISD work
an average of between four and
five hours per day and are
employed for 180 days.
Sanger bus drivers receive a
starting daily rate of $29.29,
which equals approximately
Transportation options for
the Sanger Independent School
District (ISD) were reviewed by
members of the Sanger ISD
Board of Trustees during a
meeting Tuesday, Nov. 10.
Sanger ISD, like many other
school districts in the area, has
had a hard time keeping its 18
bus driving positions filled.
Dr. Lynn Stucky, a school
board member, said that the
district is in the process of
determining what the district
would have to do to keep good
drivers vs. turning the
responsibility for managing the
bus drivers over to a company.
“Number one, we need
quality bus drivers. Those are our
children in those buses. They are
some of the most precious assets ,
in our community,” Stucky said.
Board members, he said,
• s
$7.32 per hour for four hours, and
they receive no district benefits.
By comparison the Pilot
Point ISD pays all bus drivers a
flat $7.50 per hour, and drivers .
work between two and four
hours a day.
Cynthia Hudson, head of
payroll and personnel for the
Pilot Point ISD, emphatically
confirmed the district’s problems
finding bus drivers. “It’s just hard
to find them,” Hudson said. “I
guess people just don’t want to
have a split shift like that.”
Pilot Point ISD, she said, has
eight regular drivers and no
substitute drivers. As a result,
almost all of the district’s
principals, along with the
superintendent and assistant
superintendent, are CDL
certified and find themselves
doing bus duty on a fairly
consistent basis.
In Krum, the starting yearly
rate for bus drivers is $4,250.
They receive approximately $8
per hour and average about three
hours a day or 15 hours a week,
said Ken McGraw,
transportation supervisor. ’
He, too, has been having
problems finding and keeping
qualified drivers. “It’s very
difficult. It’s a challenge to say
the least,” McGraw said.
Kent Crutsinger, director of
transportation at the Sanger ISD,
said that the possibility of the
district using an independent
management company to
handle busing would be a “last-
ditch effort" on the part of the
school to provide transportation
for students.
Aubrey and Little Elm
school districts both use such a
management company, Durham
7 * 1 Tx *4.%
h • ’<i
7*^
. J
Busing woes plague district
were informed of what other
districts have done in order to
keep their bus drivers. One of the
districts examined was Denton
ISD.
According to Susan
McGuire, Denton ISD public
information officer, despite an
aggressive recruitment
campaign by the district’s
transportation director, Gene
Holloway, the district still has a
hard time finding bus drivers.
lite reason, she said, is that
once drivers are trained by the
district and receive their CDL,
they often are hired away by
commercial companies, such as
UPS or Pepsico Inc., which pay
two to three times more than the
district can pay and offer a
straight eight-hour shift, as
opposed to a split shift.
Many times the drivers only
leave during certain peak
seasons and come back to the
r. ... j. > J
A tougher new landscape
regulation ordinance approved
by the Sanger City Council
Monday night could make it
more expensive for small
thisiness owners, which some
feel are the lifeblood of the
community, to open up shop.
However, it also may help
the city protect its image in the
v face of encroaching
development.
The Council had asked the
city’s Beautification Board to
peruse the amendments to the
landscape regulation ordinance
and give an opinion on it.
Sue Trego, president of the
Among other things, the
ordinance calls for landscaping
of between 10 and 20 percent of a
total lot, and at least 40 percent of going to adopt something this
the total landscaping has to be strict and rigid in order to make
located in the front. this community beautiful, we
The landscaped area would ought to have a process in place
have to be permanently to police it or enforce it, or this is
landscaped with living plant just a waste of time if we don’t
material and would have to have enforce it.”
either an irrigation system City Councilman Jerry
installed or be accessible to a Jenkins responded that the the
bibcock faucet or other water
source on the same lot or tract of
land.
■TL
________KafrM--..
Beautification Board, said that
the board unanimously approved
it.
“We felt like it might be a
little stiff, but that might be
needed with the growth that’s
coming to Sanger. If it’s not
strong enough, we’ll just have to
go back and re-do it often to keep
up with the growth in Sanger,”
she said.
The landscape ordinance
would affect properties in
Business (B)-l, B-2, B-3,
Industrial (I)-l and 1-2 and any
structure with non-residential
uses in zoning designated as
Single Family (SF)-l, SF-2, SF-
’ 8 v
-W- IN
•-;5 &
-.As <4. . # ,
u
: R
FALLING DOWN - Piles of autumnal loaves litter the
ground around this Bangor house on Diano Drive,
heralding the approach of colder temperatures.
SANGER TX 76266
EXPIRES
599
ourier
er
J
•iny S>anyar, and tlw oLak*
November 19.1998
50C
Volume 99, Number 56
11
1— at
5^
News
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CWw
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VICKIE-SANGER PUBLIC LIBRARY
BOX 578
$5,125
$4,250
Krum ISD
Pilot Point ISD
Denton ISD
Starting
yearly rate
«■
1
$3,982.50*
School district
_
Sanger ISD
$7,290+
t_____________
Calculated at $7.50 per hour, three hours a
day, for 177 days
tCalculated at $9 per hour, 4.5 hours a day,
for 180 days
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Hardy, Lisa. Sanger Courier (Sanger, Tex.), Vol. 99, No. 56, Ed. 1 Thursday, November 19, 1998, newspaper, November 19, 1998; Sanger, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1337715/m1/1/: accessed June 11, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Sanger Public Library.