MANITOWOC (NBC 26) — Manitowoc is taking the week of the NFL Draft off of school for their spring break.
- Interim superintendent Lee Thennes says that the spike in visitors that week could cause transportation issues
- This becomes and opportunity for the school's buses, Brandt Buses, to help out elsewhere, like shuttling for tourism
- The district's spring break is now April 21st-25th
(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story)
Most years, Manitowoc Public School students would be on spring break right around now. This year, the week off was moved to late April, NFL Draft time. One big reason is transportation.
Buses daily trips driving students can cause traffic in town, but the week of the draft that traffic could be too much.
"That's a lot of people,” said Manitowoc interim superintendent Lee Thennes. “Detroit may be able to handle it but I'm not sure about our capacity."
Thennes says the school made the call back in 2023 to move spring break to the week of April 21st.
"We didn't want to end up in a jam either,” Thennes said. “Where let's say something happens and we can't get kids where they need to go."
A week off for students, but also Brandt Buses, the company the school contracts to do their busing.
"There's more opportunities for things to go wrong and delay transportation,” said Steve Roekle of Brandt Busing.
Roekle says that in scaling back operations they now have the ability to help out with transportation elsewhere.
"We like to think we're a fabric of the community here,” says Roekle. "Certainly wherever we can help we would like to."
Roekle says they already are going to be using a bus or two to help out with tourism, committing to shuttling new lakeshore visitors to the Farm Wisconsin Discovery Center just outside of Manitowoc.
He says although they are not contracted, if they are asked to shuttle people to the draft in Green Bay, they would look into offering a few more buses.
"If you can move that week around, why not do it and support that event,” said Roekle.
Thennes told me the spring break move has garnered mixed reviews. Some students wishing they could be out of school at the normal break time. While others are excited to be off while the NFL Draft is just up the road.
