Dist. 300 considering proposal to extend contract for private busing

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Updated: February 26, 2012 8:10AM

ALGONQUIN — It’s hard to believe, said Community Unit School District 300 board member Karen Roeckner, that it has been five years since the board made the controversial move to take its transportation services private.

On Monday night, the board got an update on that contract and a recommendation that the board contract with Durham School Services to operate the district‘s bus operations for another three years, with possibly two one-year extensions to that contract.

The new contract would end in 2015 but could be extended to 2017, with the cost to the district $26.6 million a year.

Of four bidders, Durham again came in at the lowest price, which is the same amount that the district paid the contractor this year, said Donna Bordsen, District 300’s director of transportation. The contract does call for 1.5 percent and 2 percent increases in the next two years, she said.

During the past five years, Bordsen added, the district has been able to update and clarify the contract, and some of those clarifications are included in the new document.

“We built into this … the things that we were missing,” she said. “We think we have a really good document now and have covered most things” and also have the ability to fire the contractor if transportation is not working well.

Included in the new contract are two safety behavior intervention officers for the bus fleet, paid for by Durham; trip tracking software for field trips; no additional charges for late or early dismissal; and equipping all buses with audio and video recording systems.

Currently, just 60 of the district’s 220 buses have that technology, officials said.

For at least two schools, the district has been sending staff to maintain order on its buses, Bordsen added.

Beginning in the 2012-13 school year, Durham will begin to purchase replacement buses, instead of using buses owned by the district.

That was a concern for board members Roeckner and Joe Stevens. It was her recollection, Roeckner said, that the district didn’t want to turn its fleet over to a private agency. “We said we didn’t want a bus company to own all of our equipment, so we were not … locked in on one vendor,” she said.

“I do have a feeling in my gut, if we give all of our buses to them, over time we are in a much more vulnerable positions,” Stevens said.

It is more common in the industry for the bus company to own the buses, said Cheryl Crates, finance director. However, it would be 2019 before the transportation contractor owned all of the buses used by District 300, she added.

The board is expected to vote next week on the new contract proposal.