Warehouse Clerk Doug Holbert operates a forklift Friday at the 19th Street bus garage where a portion of the building is being used for storage. (Photo by Douglass Huxley)

PARKERSBURG — Wood County Schools is using the district’s 19th Street bus garage to improve storage efficiency for school materials and records.

Assistant Superintendent of Operations Kaleb Lawrence said the initiative, which has already seen significant progress, aims to address both immediate needs and long-term goals for the district.

“We came up with the idea of, hey, we can actually move it over here to the bus garage, take these two bays and organize everything,” Lawrence said. “The long-term goal is to build a new bus garage over at Edgelawn. That’s part of a five-year plan.”

He said new shelves and walls were constructed to separate the two garage bays from the rest of the building. The area now houses a wide range of school materials from books to records.

“We had maintenance come in, build all these shelves, organize it. We have finance records over there. We have HR records over there. We had Chris Rutherford (Director of Attendance and Home Services) store his home school student records,” Lawrence said. “So the idea was, and my philosophy here is, I want the stuff labeled and laid out so people know what’s what and it can be easily found.”

Textbooks and other learning materials are being housed at the 19th Street bus garage as Wood County Schools looks to improve storage efficiency for school materials and records. (Photo by Douglass Huxley)

He said the district is required to carry five years worth of curriculum and most of that is being housed at the garage along with records and other documents from the former Lincoln Elementary facility.

“To my knowledge, it’s all like textbooks,” Lawrence said. “School related materials, kindergarten, English, language arts, reading practice. We’ve got science units, so it’s county textbooks, curriculum, things like that.”

He said the transition required significant teamwork and that warehouse staff members, including Joe Hinkley and Aimee Longlot, have played key roles in making things move smoothly.

“Our guys really got after it. It was a team effort across the board,” Lawrence said. “The bus garage maintenance [team] took all that shelving down, Joe (Hinkley) and Aimee (Lott) and everybody, moving stuff over here. She (Lott) has a label system for what needs to come and go, so that things are easier to pull. And so when we moved, we said to her, ‘You tell us where you want to set it.’ And then, obviously, she’s been here a little while, so she’s kind of rearranged some things.”

He said despite the challenges of moving and adapting to a new space, staff have made the most of the available resources and have settled into the situation.

Student records and graduation paperwork is being stored at the 19th Street bus garage as Wood County Schools looks to improve storage efficiency for school materials and records. (Photo by Douglass Huxley)

“Change is hard for people, but I think everybody’s adapting to it pretty well,” Lawrence said. “We put more lights in here… we put an HVAC unit in here for them, we tried to use every nook and cranny.”

Looking ahead, Lawrence said the county intends to build a new bus garage which would centralize operations and increase efficiency.

“It only makes sense to build a new bus garage there. The buses are there, fuel is stored there, it’s just one area that would make things a lot more efficient in the county,” Lawrence said. “It’s a five-year plan. Got a lot of moving parts, but that’s our end goal: to make things a lot more efficient for the county and user friendly.”

Douglass Huxley can be reached at dhuxley@newsandsentinel.com.