School Board Breaks Ground on New McDonough West Bus Facility

Photo shows Henry County Schools staff and elected officials at the McDonough West Bus Garage groundbreaking in September 2023 (Henry County Schools photo).
McDonough West Bus Garage Groundbreaking in September 2023 (Henry County Schools photo)

Henry County Schools broke ground in September on its new McDonough West Bus Facility. The maintenance garage will serve four school clusters when complete.

McDonough West Bus Facility

The new maintenance garage will be located behind Oakland Elementary off Nail Drive. It will be able to support 218 buses and 150 drivers when complete.

The new facility will allow the district to split service into east and west operations. The westside facility will primarily serve the Dutchtown, Eagle’s Landing, Hampton, and Luella school clusters, as well as a portion of the Exceptional Student Education (ESE) program.

The project will build an all-new bus maintenance facility and parking lot. The maintenance garage will have ten service bays. In addition, there will be an on-site fueling station and bus wash. The fueling station will support natural gas, diesel and propane fueling. Henry County Schools runs buses off each. Finally, the project will renovate the office at the existing transportation facility. It too is located in McDonough. The estimated project completion date is February 2025.

The project cost equals $19.48 million dollars. Education SPLOST VI proceeds will pay for the work. Education SPLOST collections must be spent on capital projects and one-time purchases. The current E-SPLOST spans collections from 2023 to 2027.

E-SPLOST VI also includes the purchase of 125 new school buses. Such purchases are broken into five annual purchases of 25 buses each. The first two groups were bought in 2021 and 2022, respectively.

Featured image shows the groundbreaking for the new McDonough West Bus Facility. Henry County Schools photo.

About Clayton 1739 Articles
Clayton Carte is the founder and owner of The Henry Reporter. He founded the site in 2017 to highlight transportation projects. Over time, he began covering other topics like new development so residents can best know what’s happening in our community.

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