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Thursday, August 28, 2008

School Year Starts With Buses Rolling Smoothly

By Lee Ross
Mountain View Telegraph
          The first day of school came and went, and the Moriarty-Edgewood School District left no child behind, standing at the bus stop.
        Well, almost no child. But considering the circumstances at the start of school, it was nothing out of the ordinary, according to district transportation supervisor Ernie Sandoval.
        "New drivers not knowing all the kids' (stops)," Sandoval said, listing a few issues. "A few kids getting on the wrong bus ... we're ironing it all out and things seem to be going smoothly. Things are actually going very well; much better than I anticipated. The principals are all very happy."
        Getting the kids to school this year only happened after a great deal of hard work, Sandoval said. That's because the Moriarty-Edgewood School District's main school bus contractor, Plant School Transportation, closed its doors in June, just two months before the first day of school. With a deficit of around 36 buses and drivers, the school sent out a request for proposals for new drivers and the contractor they'd selected for the job pulled out at the last minute, leaving even less time to put things in order.
        "By the time we actually heard from the contractor ... from the day he told us he would quit we didn't have a whole lot of time," Sandoval said.
        About 30 days, in fact. In that time the district developed the infrastructure for the extra busing itself, hired more than 30 drivers, got contractors to beef up the parking lot to hold buses, built an extra road to accommodate the additional traffic, and hired support staff such as a secretary and another mechanic.
        Sandoval said the mechanics are hard at work, too, working the kinks out of the new buses, including 22 new rigs and a few loaners. Sandoval has been grinding away, too.
        "I've been here early, a lot earlier, and a lot later every day, but we've got to make sure everything works," Sandoval said. "To do everything we had to do and get it all done in time was very, very intense."
        He used the word "smooth" to describe the final product quite a few times over the course of the interview, and Moriarty High School Principal Wayne Marshall agreed.
        "I can't even tell that anything has changed," he said. "As far as service and schedules and getting kids to and from school, everything is working great from my perspective."
        He also pointed out that some of the drivers who used to work for Plant School Transportation are now employed by the district, and even have the same bus routes.
        One difference for the drivers will be a benefits package, which includes retirement and health care options, and their paychecks are distributed evenly throughout the year, even though they are not working or earning wages during the summer months.
        Another difference is that the district, unlike Plant School Transportation, is not a for-profit business. That means there's a little more money to spread around, but Sandoval said that cash is probably absorbed by the drivers' benefits packages, so it's something of a wash.
        The perks may lead to better retention of bus drivers, Sandoval pointed out. Last year the district had some difficulties filling open bus driver positions, many of them vacancies in Plant School Transportation's pool of drivers, but some of the drivers working for the district have stuck around for as long as 27 years. Sandoval said he hopes that trend continues with the new drivers.
        "I'm very optimistic. I think that the majority of them will continue to stay," he said.
        He also said that fuel costs, one of the reasons Plant School Transportation said it had to close its doors, have gone down by around 40 cents per gallon.