School Bus Firm to Pay Fine to Settle County Suit : Oxnard: The action alleges that Laidlaw’s driver training was taught by a non-certified instructor. The company agrees to $25,000 penalty.

Laidlaw Transit, which provides bus transportation to about 400 Ventura County students on a daily basis, agreed Friday to pay $25,000 in civil penalties to settle a lawsuit filed against the company for unlawful practices related to its driver training program.

The settlement with the county did not include any admission of wrongdoing by Laidlaw, the nation’s largest provider of school bus transportation, authorities said.

The civil action, filed on behalf of the county, stemmed from an investigation by the California Highway Patrol and the California Department of Education, said Deputy Dist. Atty. David Fairweather.

The two agencies were tipped off by a former employee of the company, Fairweather said.

The lawsuit, one of a series of complaints filed against the company in recent years over poor management and haphazard service, alleged that between January and September of 1989, driver training at Laidlaw’s Oxnard headquarters was taught by a non-certified instructor.

Laidlaw contended that state law only requires that a certified instructor direct, rather than actually teach, a driver-training class, said Dave Daley, vice president for Laidlaw’s southwest region.

Laidlaw said its driving coach at the time was working under the direction of a certified instructor, but acknowledged that the instructor was not always present in the classroom, Daley said.

“They said as long as he could hear what was going on in the classroom, it was OK,” Fairweather said. “Our position was that a certified instructor has to actually teach the class or be present in the classroom.”

Daley downplayed the significance of the incident.

“This was just a really stupid mistake by two employees who were supposed to be supervising,” Daley said. He said that one of the employees was fired because of the incident and the other has undergone retraining.

Daley said the settlement with Ventura County will serve to enhance the company’s safety procedures in the future.

The company contracts with the office of the Ventura County superintendent of schools to provide transportation services for handicapped or other special education students to several of the schools that the superintendent’s office operates.

Daley said the company runs 90 to 100 buses a day in Ventura County, with the majority of the vehicles being mini-vans designed to accommodate wheelchair passengers. About 400 students use the transportation service.

Bob Smith, assistant superintendent of business services for the county superintendent of schools, said most of the county’s 20 school districts provide their own transportation services.

Other than the civil action filed by the county, Smith said his office has not had any problems with Laidlaw in the seven years that it has contracted with the firm.

“We were disappointed that this happened, but we were comfortable knowing that they quickly corrected the problem,” he said. “They didn’t try to hide anything.”

Still, the incident serves as another embarrassment for Laidlaw, whose reputation has been tarnished in recent years by problems associated with a number of its Southern California operations.

Arrests of Laidlaw drivers for drunk driving and other crimes, as well as complaints about poor management and service, have cost the company millions of dollars in contracts and revenues.

But Daley noted that most of the company’s troubles occurred two or three years ago and have since been corrected. The company has boosted its pay to attract better workers, toughened its driving requirements and added drug- and alcohol-abuse courses for supervisors, he said.

“We have done a lot of work in the last three years to make the system better,” Daley said. “I think our reputation with our clients at this point is exceptional.”