2011 Spelled The Demise Of A Popular School Transportation System

By Eliza Hallabeck

For half of 2011, the transportation of Newtown’s students became a near-constant topic for the Board of Education.

Following the school district’s announcement of a bid for transportation services for the 2012-13 academic year, school district Business Director Ronald Bienkowski spoke to the school board during its meeting on Tuesday, June 7, regarding the bid.

Newtown’s students are currently transported by both owner-operators, individually contracted bus drivers, and MTM Transportation Inc, a local fleet operator that specializes in special needs students and out-of-district transportation. Mr Bienkowski said at the June 7 meeting that the owner-operators’ contracts will be up for the 2012-13 school year.

Forms for bid, certification, conditions, and specifications were made available at the district offices on May 31.

The owner-operator contract was last approved by the school board in 2007, for five years. The MTM Transportation contract is separate and was last approved in 2009, also as a five-year contract.

Following the meeting, Mr Bienkowski specified a possible change in the contract would not affect the 2011-12 school year for students transported by owner-operators, because, whichever company or owner-operator system received the bid, he said, would take effect for the 2012-13 school year.

During the June 7 meeting then-Board of Education Vice Chair Debbie Leidlein questioned what a performance bond was and why it was added to the bid announcement for the contract.

A performance bond, Mr Bienkowski responded, requests an insurance provider underwrite a submitted bid on a large contract to guarantee the contractor performs the specified services.

Ms Leidlein said the bid specifications could eliminate the current transportation system, “which is beloved in our town,” and asked why the owner-operators would be asked to provide the performance bond.

More than a month later, on July 12, nearly every person who came to address the Board of Education at its meeting spoke in favor of Newtown’s owner-operator system.

That meeting was the first time the Board of Education formally learned of the submitted transportation bids.

When the bids were opened June 24, the consortium of owner-operators bid $11,728,895 to hold onto their jobs. The lowest bid, however, was tendered by MTM Transportation, which agreed to provide comparative services for $9,957,902. Three other bus companies also tendered bids lower than the owner-operators, with Dattco bidding $11,405,584, First Student bidding $11,049,663, and All-Star bidding $10,217,722.

MTM Transportation later dropped its bid.

“It’s obvious when you look at the numbers that there are significant differences,” said Mr Bienkowski during the meeting, adding that all of the bidders are capable of fulfilling the contract. The decision, he said, would ultimately be made by the school board.

The field later narrowed since the bids were first announced, as Mr Bienkowski pointed out at a special meeting of the board, July 26.

During the meeting then-Board of Education Chair William Hart directed Mr Bienkowski to seek out an extension on the contract to allow time for the school board to interview the four lowest bidders publicly.

Mr Hart, who presented the idea of interviewing the four bidders during a public meeting, said the session, once scheduled, would include 15-minute presentations by each bidder and 15 minutes for questioning each bidder. Mr Hart also said he would not expect a decision to be made until after the public meeting for interviews. While First Student and DATTCO did not withdraw their bids, the two companies elected not to attend the scheduled August 20 meeting.

With two bright yellow buses sitting just outside the Newtown High School cafetorium on August 20, the local owner-operators, represented by Beth Koschel and Carey Schierloh, and representatives from All-Star Transportation h gave presentations to and responded to questions from the Board of Education.

One of the strong points Ms Koschel stressed during a presentation at the August 20 event was the immediate availability for owner-operators to respond if needed in emergencies, whether it is for sudden school closings or incidents like a mass evacuation that occurred in 2010 when a sudden, severe storm threatened the outdoor Relay For Life.

She also confirmed in a written document that 98 percent of the time, the same drivers drive the same route, and she told the board that local drivers who keep their buses at their home are much less likely to suffer from any type of mass vandalism that occasionally occurs at bus storage lots.

During All-Star’s presentation, John Dufour, assisted by his sister, Leslie Dufour-Sheldon, detailed the Dufour family’s 75 years of expertise in the transportation business, and more recently as the largest drivers training school in Connecticut under the All-Star Driver brand. He said the family’s company operates more than 550 vehicles with 650 employees carrying more than 25,000 students annually, earning $35 million in annual sales. He said the company’s safety supervisors have 25 years or more experience and handle both classroom and on the road training, adding that every driver, no matter how experienced, is subject to a safety inspector ride-along at least once per year.

Following the two presentations, several members of the public and the school board toured each bidder’s bus.

The Board of Education then met in an executive session on Tuesday, August 30, to discuss the “pending labor claim regarding student transportation.” Mr Hart said his board met with district lawyers during the meeting.

Since the board met in an executive session, everything discussed during the meeting is confidential. No motion or vote was made following the closed session.

In a 5-1 vote September 6, the Board of Education awarded All-Star Transportation the five-year bus contract that would have the Torrington-based company fulfilling about half of the transportation services in town from 2012 through 2017.

“I think that they clearly plan to be both financially and socially part of this community,” said Mr Hart of the All-Star company. “So, in short, I believe that the board has no choice from the perspectives of safety and cost, community and ethics, but to put our transportation system on a sound businesslike footing.”

Mr Hart and board members Andrew Buzzi, David Nanavaty, Richard Gaines, and Keith Alexander voted in favor of awarding All-Star Transportation the contract. BOE Vice Chair Debbie Leidlein, who later became the BOE chair, was the only member of the board who voted against the motion. Member Lillian Bittman was not present for the meeting.

Nearly 80 Years

Of Service

The owner-operator system began in 1934 when the Board of Education first opened bids for transporting Newtown’s students, according to Town Historian Dan Cruson’s Educating Newtown’s Children: A History of Its Schools.

Over nearly 80 years, the owner-operator system grew to 32 contractors — all who operate like independent small businesses with their own vehicles, maintenance responsibilities, and substitute drivers under their hire.

The decision to award All-Star the new contract effectively ends Newtown’s owner-operator tradition on the last day of June 2012.

Following an executive session on October 4, the school board voted 5-1 to approve the final contract between the school district and All-Star Transportation.

At the time, Mr Hart said his board understood residents may be unhappy with the decision to award the contract to All-Star and not Newtown’s traditional bus drivers, individually contracted owner-operators. In response to some public participation speakers at that meeting and previously, Mr Hart said once the board voted in September to award the contract there was no way to unaward the contract without giving All-Star the option of suing the district.

In the month since the contract was awarded to All-Star, Mr Hart said the language of the contract was being reviewed. There are some changes to the contract from the original bid document, Mr Hart said, but mostly, “nothing really” changed.

One change, Mr Hart pointed out, allows for the school district to hire owner-operators as a union to drive under All-Star’s supervision in the event a pending labor complaint is upheld by the State Board of Labor Relations. The complaint was scheduled to go before the State Board of Labor Relations on December 29.