Following through with a promise to hire a new bus service provider after a string of student and parent complaints about the current provider, District 200 is poised this month to hire a new bus company.
Chicago-based R&D Company has provided regular ed buses to the district since 2005, but the district has fired the firm after buses showed up late and also failed to pick up students at designated spots, among other complaints.
The district will look to hire First Student bus service at an annual cost of about $278,000. It’s a three-year contract, but the school can renew it annually based on performance, said Tod Altenburg, D200’s chief financial officer.
R&D’s current three-year contract ended in June, with the district opting not to renew it.
First Student is headquartered in Cincinnati and also provides buses for special needs and early childhood students. D200’s special needs buses are currently provided by Grand Prairie Transit, a subsidiary of transportation company Cook-Illinois Corporation. Grand Prairie is currently providing regular ed bus service for D200 until a new provider is hired, according to Altenburg.
The D200 Finance Committee discussed the hiring of First Student at their Sept. 16 meeting. The full board meets on Sept. 23.
The company is actually contracted with the district on a trial basis to provide buses for certain trips, said Ronald Johnson, D200’s director of purchasing and transportation.
“Currently, we are utilizing First Student bus service to provide these trips based on a purchase order. So what we wanted to do, before we recommended to the board, was a trial run. Are they going to provide the services that we expect? And everything is going really well, which is why I feel confident and comfortable bringing one bid to you for approval,” Johnson said.
But some Finance Committee members weren’t happy with the district receiving just the one bid. There were also concerns about the higher costs for First Student. The district is currently paying about $230,000 for R&D.
“As a finance committee it’s concerning because you’re talking about a 21-percent increase,” said committee Chair Tom Cofsky. “We’re fortunate as a district that our transportation spending really is not significant. But this is a sizable increase of almost $50,000, and the well is not bottomless by any means. And so one challenge is to say, how are we going to recover this?”
Cofsky also expressed concern about receiving just one bid.
Johnson explained that the school interviewed other companies prior to opening the bid process, and though First Student ended up being the only bidder it did meet much of the district’s requirements over the others.
“We conducted those prior to the bid opening to kind of get a good feel of who would be involved in the process,” Johnson said. “So that’s how I wanted this process to go in the event of guaranteed services so we don’t run into a situation where we’re told we’re not going to have buses arrive. And, as I said, when you cast a net into the sea sometimes you only have one fish that gets caught, and that’s our situation we’re in right now.”
One of the companies, Johnson said, couldn’t commit to guaranteed service and another couldn’t meet the district’s insurance requirements.
Concerning the cost increase, Johnson added that D200 has been paying below market value for nearly a decade with R&D, which likely led to the company providing services to other higher-playing clients over the high school.
But the cost increase also troubled committee member Jeff Weissglass. The district, he noted, has made recent commitments to keep costs down and this latest increase doesn’t follow that.
“I’m worried about the overall costs, how we’re going to manage it and whether there’s a cultural issue here that we should be addressing. So, I know I’ve got a finance committee chair whom I deeply respect and who’s very conservative around these things and wants to hold costs down and I see over and over again that we’re having a hard time doing that,” Weissglass said.