ORANGE : Board Opts to Privatize Student Bus Service

School board members voted this week to privatize student bus service in the Orange Unified School District, although mistakes in the bid packages sent out are so big the amount of savings cannot be determined.

Trustees have sought for months to find a way to reduce the cost of their bus program, which is over budget by $650,000 to $1 million. The district formally requested bids in September for contractors to run the troubled, aging bus fleet. It received three responses.

Purchasing director Dwain Raney told the board Wednesday that he had found serious flaws in the bid package that was sent to contractors. For example, it only asks for the hourly charge, but not for the cost of runs that take less than an hour.

As a result, administrators cannot predict how much, if anything, the district could save by privatizing. The amount could be as low as $200,000 instead of the $800,000 they had hoped to recoup, Raney said.

Trustee Martin Jacobson asked the other board members to vote to go ahead with a decision to privatize anyway.

“Most of the talk . . . has centered on the specific contract, and the issue we have been wrestling with is whether to privatize or not,” he said.

Union leaders, still reeling from the defeat Tuesday of the school board candidates they had backed, have vowed to fight the decision to lay off 70 bus drivers.

About 25 bus drivers, some of whom had pleaded for the trustees to keep the service in-house for safety reasons, filed out of the room after the 7-0 vote Wednesday.

“Contractors are known for accidents because they are a profit-making enterprise and they take shortcuts,” labor representative William A. Lokay said after the meeting.

The Classified School Employee Assn., which represents the drivers, will try to reverse the decision in negotiations and, failing that, will file complaints with the Public Employment Relations Board, Lokay said.