The St. Tammany Parish School Board committee as a whole for business affairs and administration agreed with recommendations made by Superintendent Gayle Sloan regarding bus owner/operators.

According to the recommendations made Thursday night, bus owner/operators would receive a permanent increase in their operating allowance of $1,200, pending approval in the budget process for the upcoming year.

In addition, the state has granted a one-time $1,000 supplement to all non-certified employees, including bus drivers. Sloan’s second recommendation is to include the mileage between schools for routes in mileage compensation. For example, a driver may have a first route in Mandeville and takes the students to a school in that area.

Then he may have to drive to Covington to pick up other students for deliver in that area. The miles in between the two areas were considered dead head miles in the past, and drivers were not compensated. However, this recommendation will allow payment for these miles as part of the driver’s daily route.

Mileage to and from the driver’s home (or where the bus is kept) and the first pickup in the morning and last drop off at night is not included in route mileage and will not be paid.

In addition, routes are being reviewed so drivers are not going from one end of the parish to another.

Director of Transportation Ronald J. Despenza said the department will be making the most efficient use of routes and will verify route mileage.

“We want to be fair to the owner/operators and to the school system,” he said.

Despenza said the routes are created by the transportation department, then owner/operators apply for available routes. The routes are awarded to drivers according to seniority.

School Board President Neal Hennegan also suggested the board hold a tax seminar for the bus drivers to help them better utilize deductions.

The third recommendation made is for field trip payments. A committee will be appointed to study field trip requests and determine fair compensation for the trips in order to standardize field trip compensation.