Decision on Rutherford School Buses Put on Hold

An image of a school bus. (Stock image)

Parents of students in the Rutherford County School District will have to wait to learn whether any major changes will be made to prevent further bus route losses.

While seven bus drivers were approved to work with the district after leaving Ursa Major Logistics and instead securing private bus insurance, no action was taken on a proposed “hybrid model” that would have allowed the district to buy school buses to replace future unfilled contracts during the Rutherford County Board of Education meeting on Thursday.

Board member Butch Vaughn motioned to allow the district to purchase five school buses and three more special education buses, but ultimately, members did not approve his proposal.

The discussion comes after more than 40 school buses and 41 school bus routes went unserved on February 23 and 24 due to a lapse in insurance coverage for many of the more than 120 bus drivers the district contracts with, as the district does not operate its own bus system.

In 2025, the district also narrowly avoided a bus driver strike by agreeing to a deal with the Rutherford County Bus Contractors Organization (RCBCO) that included a 17 percent pay raise, a 2.5 percent annual raise over the next three years and a $4,000 stipend for each driver to pay for their bus insurance.

The Discussion

Rutherford County School District Engineering and Construction Chief Operations Officer Trey Lee briefed the board with an update on the situation: that there are currently 12 bus routes still left uncovered and that an email had been sent out with a 4:30 p.m. Friday deadline for contractors to express interest in the open routes before a random drawing on Monday to determine which contractors will cover routes.

After Vaughn’s motion, board members Caleb Tidwell, Tammy Sharp, and Stan Vaught, among others, expressed concerns about the perils of rushing into a decision and the financial strain of owning backup school buses.

“Our contractors bailed us out when we had this situation come up,” Tidwell said. “This has worked for 40-plus years. We have looked at centralizing this before. It was more expensive when we looked at that. I am not completely opposed to looking at this as far as what we have need of, but I would rather come back with the results from the all-call.”

“I think we have some due diligence that we need to take care of and have an exact number of buses that we need, an exact number of cost that this is going to happen, because this is going to add more bureaucracy to our system,” Sharp said.

“We can't make a decision based on feelings and thoughts right now,” Vaught said. “We have to make decisions on concrete information we have right now. That's what's bothering me about all of this. There's too many unknowns, and so for us to blatantly say, ‘Well, we're going to do this, or we're going to do that,’ I just don't think we have enough information.”

Vaughn rescinded his motion after the discussion concluded.