SUSD taken for a ride?

Stockton Unified Superintendent Steve Lowder describes the purchase of 31 special education buses as a "no-brainer." After all, the district only paid $2 million and SUSD pays Storer Transportation $3 million a year to run its routes busing special education students.
Three take-away two is pretty simple math. A no-brainer, if you will.
So why then do the buses sit unused in the district maintenance yard on Sanguinetti Lane?
It turns out the math isn't nearly that simple. Buying the buses is just the initial cost. Then you have to maintain them, insure them, fuel them and hire drivers for them. Those on-going costs have Michele Huntoon, SUSD's new chief business officer, questioning whether the promised savings are all that much. Or exist at all.
District trustees sure must have liked the estimated $700,000 annual savings. They voted 7-0 to buy the buses. Curiously, now that the numbers have gotten a little soft the memory of the vote by one trustee, board President Kathleen Garcia, has gotten a little fuzzy.
"If we spent money on all that, we ought to have our heads examined," she told a Record reporter. "I just don't remember it."
Trustees David Varela and Steve Smith made and seconded the motion to buy the buses respectively, according to the meeting minutes. They didn't return Record calls for comment on Friday.
All $2 million may not be lost, even if not one of the buses picks up one student. Lowder says maybe SUSD can lease
them to another agency or sell them. Maybe.