Frayed, pinholed and inky, Genia Sullivan's map of Washington Township is her secret weapon.
Spread across her desk in all-out battle mode, the laminated piece of paper is crucial to a campaign far more complicated, expensive and important than many realize.
Sullivan, a spinning top of energy, is the school district's transportation manager, and the map is her key to making sure that 10,000 children get to school the first day and every day.
Only $5.7 million of the district's $100 million budget is spent on transportation. But with development in Washington Township requiring more routes and bigger bus bills, Sullivan is as important to the education process as any principal or teacher.
And with schools reopening this week, many other growing suburban districts are dealing with the same challenges.
"My entire staff has been putting in 12-, 14-hour workdays for the last week and a half," Michael Howey, business manager for Chester County's Avon Grove School District, said last week. "The closer we get to the opening of school, the more intense the process gets."
Added Mike King, transportation manager for the Central Bucks School District, based in Doylestown: "It's a logistical nightmare, a large puzzle that has to be put together."
Consider Sullivan's task: arranging runs that begin at 6:30 a.m. and may last until well past dark, depending on sports schedules. At the busiest times in the morning and afternoon, more than 3,000 students can be on the road at once.
There are five or six separate runs - for students going to non-district schools, high school, middle school, early elementary, late elementary, kindergarten. And that's just to ferry them to school.
Then there are field trips and sporting events, most of which involve Washington Township buses.
Add this September's switch - Washington Township's primary schools swap starting times every three years so children in one part of the township are not always stuck with late starting and dismissal times - and you could have chaos.
"Right now, everything looks good on paper," said Sullivan, who coordinates a fleet of sixty-seven 54-passenger buses plus eight vans. "I'll know for sure on Thursday, when school starts and parents start calling."
Like the Avon Grove and Central Bucks areas, Washington Township is booming.
