By Tracy Ouellette
SLN Staff
The bus drivers in the East Troy Community School District showed up in force for the Jan. 9 School Board meeting to voice their concerns about the possibility of outsourcing the district’s bus service.
The concerns from the drivers brought to the board included the outsourced companies safety records, how student discipline issues would be handled and the overall cost of outsourcing.
“We do it cheaper and can do it cheaper,” Steve Adsit said. “They have to make a profit.”
The School Board was recently presented with two proposals for bus service from Durham School Services and First Student.
District Business Manager Kathy Zwirgzdas said she had sent out about 10 requests for proposal a couple of months ago to look at the idea of outsourcing the bus service and had received two back. She then asked for several different options from both companies to address the district’s needs.
Zwirgzdas said one thing the district insisted upon in the proposals was that every bus driver they have on staff would be offered a job with the new company with their pay at or above current levels. There were also options for leasing or selling the district’s buses to the new company and the possibility of the new company using the district’s garage for its base in East Troy.
The district bus garage needs to be upgraded and that cost was figured into the proposals from both companies.
Those proposals have been reviewed by the School Board in closed session, which is allowed under state statues because the proposals are legal contracts under negotiation.
District Administrator Chris Hibner said the next step in the process was to bring the matter to the board in an open meeting to allow for a public hearing, which happened at the Jan. 9 meeting.
Hibner told the bus drivers their input was not only wanted, but needed for the board to make its decision in the matter. He emphasized district administration was recommending a significant investment in transportation to the board and was providing the board with two options to do it – keep the bus service in house and do the facility upgrades and hiring needed or to outsource the service.
Either way, Zwirgzdas and Hibner said the district is going to have to pay to upgrade the transportation. The question is, what is the most effective way to do it.
Two of the big things that need to be done are installing new cameras on the buses, which will run the district about $15,000 to $20,000, and upgrading the bus garage, which could cost anywhere from $125,000 to $250,000.
Zwirgzdas stressed that these items were one-time items and while expensive, not as concerning to her as the costs of the added employees the district needs. She said when she was looking at the pros and cons of outsourcing, the thing that struck her the most was the staff the outside bus services could provide.
The School District has about 25 bus drivers at the moment, but Zwirgzdas said it’s been so hard filling the positions over the years and things have gotten “so thin” she literally can’t fall asleep some nights because she’s worried about having a driver for a route the next day.
Some of the bus drivers said it would help if they could hire people to just do morning or afternoon routes instead of the district insisting on one driver having to run both routes every day.
Zwirgzdas disputed this was a requirement and said anyone willing to drive a route should apply to the district, but the drivers said this was their understanding for years. In the end, while it was preferred to have one driver for both routes, Zwirgzdas said it wasn’t a requirement at the district level.
The bottom line on the issue is that the School District is going to have to invest in its transportation. It will be more expensive for the district to outsource the busing, but in a telephone interview Jan. 10 Zwirgzdas the trade off would be better staffing, administration, training and safety.
“That’s something the board is going to have to decide,” she said. “Is the trade off better for the district or is it better to keep control here in the district?”
The board tabled a decision on the subject until the next meeting to give the members time to consider their options and the feedback they received at the meeting. The School Board will meet at 6 p.m. on Jan. 23 in the high school library.
