Board puts brakes on district bus service

Laidlaw wins
$346K contract to handle eight routes

BY SANDI CARPELLO
Correspondent

Laidlaw wins
$346K contract to handle eight routes
BY SANDI CARPELLO
Correspondent

The wheels of the Eatontown school district operated bus service have officially come to a stop.

In an effort to close a $329,000 hole in the district’s 2004-05 school budget, the Board of Education voted June 29 to put the brakes on the district’s longtime transportation service and replace it with Laidlaw Transit Inc., the largest private bus company in North America.

The vote was 7-2, with only board members Charles "Skip" Fischer III and Joseph Gaetano voting against the resolution. Out of the five private bus companies who placed bids to handle the school district’s eight bus routes on June 28, Laidlaw came in the lowest at $346,176. As a result of the board’s decision, which came only one day after the bids were submitted, 18 out of the district’s 21 school bus drivers and drivers aides will not have jobs in September.

However, the changeover in bus service allowed the system to maintain 11 teaching positions, which could have been cut if the district did not contract out transportation service, according to Board Attorney Dennis Collins.

During the four and a half hour meeting last week — which drew a crowd of more than 150 — parents, drivers, and union representatives pleaded with the board to keep the transportation service in-house, fearing the $216,663 in savings, which includes auctioning off the school’s fleet of buses, would only come at the children’s expense.

A call to Hoover’s office on Monday to find out how much the district expected to save in operating expenses — excluding money generated by sale of equipment which is a one-time savings — was not returned in time for the Atlanticville’s Tuesday deadline.

For many in the audience, the savings did not justify the switch.

"If you privatize the bus service, I’ll take my son to school and my wife will pick him up," said borough parent Brent Miller, whose autistic son requires extra supervision while being transported to and from school. "I won’t put him on that bus."

"What makes you think Laidlaw can do the same job on the cheap that we have done with excellence for years?" district bus driver Mary Dellano asked the board. "A contractor is in it for the money and just money."

Joe Murphy, a representative from the New Jersey Education Association who advocated against privatization, suggested that the board find other ways to cut costs.

"You are looking to outsource, or subcontract, which is really a nice way of saying you’re firing people," he told them. "You are impacting the lives of human beings."

But Board of Education President Pamela Clarke, who seemed largely unmoved by the audience’s passionate pleas, said the Eatontown district was the only K – eight district in Monmouth County with a public bus service.

After the board’s decision, a devastated David Parreot, who has worked as a district driver for nearly two decades and does not have a job lined up for September, buried his face in his hands and wept.

"I can’t believe it," he said. "I’ve driven that bus for 18 years."