Buses, teachers get ready for first day of school in Mat-Su Borough

PALMER — As school operations go, they don’t get more complicated than the one First Student runs.

“We’re pretty much the largest fleet in Alaska,” said Larry Swift, field safety supervisor for the bus contractor. That fleet runs 106 regular education routes and 44 special education routes in the Mat-Su Borough alone. He said that starting Thursday, motorists should keep their eyes out for busses beginning at 6 a.m., when the first students are being picked up.

“We just had our state inspection and we got all those new buses and we ended up coming 98 percent on good buses, so we were happy about that,” Swift said.

As of Monday afternoon, drivers were out running through the safety courses. That’s in addition to courses run through the year.

“During the school year, we have an in-service and we had them doing both roundabouts and then doing cone courses at schools,” he said.

Meanwhile, over at the Mat-Su Borough School District’s administration building, spokeswoman Catherine Esary said this week is an in-service week for teachers as they prepare to welcome thousands of students back to school for a new term.

“It’s professional development for teachers and staff,” Esary said.

Enrollment numbers are fluid, but the district projects 17,300 children will be enrolled in school this year.

“Registration is still occurring. If parents have not registered their students they ought to go online. Registration is all online this year,” she said. “They can contact their school and certainly go in and meet the principal and that sort of thing, but everything is online this year.”

The school district’s website is matsuk12.us. Links for parents on that site can get you to things like lunch menus and an online payment portal for lunches and fees.

Swift said First Student has about 40 new drivers this year, which is pretty typical for the start of a year.

“It goes by seniority — whoever’s been there the longest gets to pick what routes they want,” he said. “Some of them, they bid on the same route very year so the kids know them from elementary all the way up to when they’re in high school.”

The company also has new buses with powerful heaters students seem to like.

“They were telling me, ‘can you turn down’ the heat in the middle of winter and we never heard that before,” Swift said.

Speaking of new things, Esary said a number of schools have new principals:

• David Russell, formerly of Palmer Junior Middle School, is taking over at Shaw Elementary.

• Thomas Lytle, formerly of Machetanz Elementary, is taking the reins at PJMS.

• Jennifer Dowd is taking over Machetanz, coming to the district from Kenai.

• Benjamin Howard comes to Houston Middle School from the Bering Straight School District.

Esary said that if anyone has supplies they’d like to donate for students or needs supplies for their own kids they can call the district at 745-9239. Other district inquiries can call 746-9200.

Middle and high schools run from 7:45 a.m. to 2:15 p.m., elementary schools from 9:15 a.m. to 3:50 p.m.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or

andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.