School Bus Service to Be Half-Privatized

Orange Unified School District trustees this week made a partial retreat from an ambitious effort to privatize student bus services.

The seven-member board voted 6 to 1 in a closed session late Thursday to divide bus duties between unionized drivers and a private transportation company. Trustee Jim Fearns voted against the proposal, saying he wanted the entire program to be run by the district.

District employees, who were laid off last spring when the trustees contracted out for all bus services, will drive the district’s 35 regular bus routes, and Laidlaw Transportation will take 38 routes for special education students.

Trustees were forced to reconsider the privatization effort when Santa Barbara Transportation Co. backed out of its contract the day before school opened.

The company said it did so because the district’s insurance was inadequate. But school district officials said the problem was that the company had failed to hire enough drivers.

Since then, the district has operated a temporary system with some of the laid-off drivers, retirees and substitutes.

The California School Employees Assn., which represents the drivers, had submitted a proposal to bring the bus system permanently in-house. Laidlaw, meanwhile, submitted bids to take over all or part of the system.

Trustee Martin Jacobson said the board decided to split the system to see which works more efficiently: private or union. The union’s offer to take cuts in benefits also helped sway the board.

“They made some concessions, and they want to make the department work,” Jacobson said of the union drivers.

Barbara Noble, president of the local union, said the drivers will be given a wage increase to offset some of the cuts in benefits.

The new contracts should be in effect by early February.