Rough road ahead for busing in Lorain

Changing busing services was supposed to save Lorain Schools money, but the deal now seems likely to cost the district more money, at least in the short term. Even worse, as of Wednesday, the district didn't appear to have all of the buses or drivers needed to transport students when school begins later this month. Some charter schools serviced by the district's bus fleet start Aug. 15. Classes at Lorain Schools begin Aug. 17. The issues can be traced back to a new contract the district signed in April with Cincinnati-based Auxilio to provide busing services. The deal was not only supposed to be cheaper, but to increase the number of students who would be bused to school. As part of their plan to free Lorain Schools from state control, district officials are trying to increase attendance, in part by reinstating free bus service for students who live more than two miles away from Lorain High School. The district already bused elementary and middle school students who lived outside that radius, but high schoolers who wanted to take the bus had to pay $25 per year to do so. Auxilio is supposed to provide those services, and at a cheaper cost than First Student, which has bused Lorain students for the past two decades. When bids were opened a few months ago, Auxilio was by far the cheaper option. It promised to bus Lorain students at a cost of $2.2 million the first year. First Student would have done the same work for $3.8 million in the first contract year, which meant the district would have saved $1.6 million by going with Auxilio. The annual cost increases for each offer were roughly 3 percent in the subsequent two years. Auxilio won the contact, which kicked in Aug. 1. The company brought in 41 buses, which are now parked at the high school, but because the buses were purchased out of state, they must be inspected by the Ohio Highway Patrol. Those inspections have turned up issues on some of the buses, including with fire-retardant material under the seats and a switch that would allow drivers to extend the buses' stop signs and turn on the flashing lights without opening the bus doors. Auxilio CEO Edward Dollin told the school board Wednesday that the company would be ready to go by Aug. 15. "We're not going to leave kids on the side of the road, I can tell you that," Dollin said. Superintendent Jeff Graham and the school board clearly don't share his confidence because at the same meeting the board voted to allow Graham to spend $2.4 million in federal emergency relief funds to buy 26 buses and four vans. "Our attorneys are in contact and we fully expect Auxilio to transport our students this year," Graham said. "… But we felt we needed to have a backup plan. We only purchased buses in the case that they cannot provide transportation for our students." That's an expensive backup plan. Graham said that if Auxilio came through, the district could sell the buses and vans. Whether it could get a buyer to pay the same price it paid is another matter, dependent in part on whether the buses and vans needed to be retrofitted to meet another state's safety rules and how much wear and tear Lorain Schools put on them. If the district takes a loss on its purchase of buses and vans, is Auxilio going to make up the difference? There's also the question of who's going to drive the buses. Although Dollin estimated Auxilio had hired between 23 and 25 bus drivers through Wednesday, it still needed to increase staffing. The plan was to have between 35 and 37 drivers in place by Sept. 1, which is about two weeks after school starts. Even if the Auxilio drivers can operate the district's temporary fleet, there don't appear to be enough drivers to start the school year. Will that mean pickups will be delayed and students will be late to school just as the year begins? All of these issues have the makings of a potential lawsuit, although no one has mentioned that possibility, at least in public. It's good that Lorain Schools plans to expand busing for the coming school year, but those plans appear in danger of stalling out in the short term. The district and Auxilio need to make sure the buses are ready to roll on time.