Penn Hills School Board may decide tonight on hiring private firm
Transit workers for the Penn Hills School District hoped they would learn Monday if they still will have jobs next school year, but the school board did not decide whether it will keep its workers or hire a private carrier to transport students.
The board, however, has since scheduled a special meeting for 7 p.m. today to discuss and possibly take action on the matter.
In November, the district sent a letter to transit workers saying it was considering selling its bus fleet and outsourcing transportation services to a private carrier when the transit workers' current contract expires June 30. The change would be an effort to cut costs as the district faces a $3.9 million budget deficit for next school year.
Lori Krapf, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1552, which represents the district's 93 bus drivers, bus aides and mechanics, said she has given speeches supporting contract renewal for district transportation workers at each of the past six school board meetings.
"We've gotten up and pleaded. We've gotten up and explained everything," Mrs. Krapf said. "And it falls on deaf ears. ... They're not listening to our screaming. Or pleading. Or rationalization. They don't hear any of it."
Richard Liberto, district director of business affairs, said the district would recoup about $1 million from selling its buses, but he declined to elaborate on the amount of money that outsourcing transit workers would save the district.
"There's a lot of factors that are in place now that were not in place five or 10 years ago, such as the rising cost of PSERS," Mr. Liberto said, referring to the Pennsylvania Public School Employees Retirement System, which manages the pension system for educational employees in the state.
Mr. Liberto also cited rising health care costs and the growing cost to replace buses.
"It's just becoming to the point where it's just too expensive to operate," he said.
He confirmed that the district has received proposals from two bus lines -- First Student of Cincinnati and Durham School Services of Warrenville, Ill. ---- but he declined to offer bid amounts.
Mrs. Krapf said productive negotiations have not taken place between the union and the district in months, and transit workers just want an answer on whether their jobs are going to be eliminated.
Over the past two months, bus drivers repeatedly have petitioned the board to vote on the matter.
At a meeting last week between union leaders and the district's legal counsel, Mrs. Krapf said she asked that the school board vote Monday on the matter.
Monday's agenda did not include a resolution to vote on the transit workers' contract. At the request of school board candidate Erin Vecchio, board member Joseph Bailey made a motion to add the transit worker issue to the agenda, but his motion failed to receive a majority of votes.
"What's the problem with taking a vote and telling us that we're out the door?" bus driver Gary Krapf, who is married to Mrs. Krapf, asked during an impassioned speech to the school board Monday. "Twenty-five years I've worked here and I'd like to know today if I got a job tomorrow morning," he said.
Mr. Liberto declined to comment on negotiations but said they were being held in good faith and had been delayed by prior travel commitments and the Easter holiday.
At school board meetings, some parents have expressed concern about entrusting their children to contracted drivers who don't know their youngsters and who are not familiar with the area. Eighty percent of Penn Hills' unionized transit workers live in the district.
"As a mother of two daughters who ride the bus, we have the best bus drivers we could ask for," school board candidate Denise Graham-Shealey said at a board meeting last month.
Nancy Buckner, a Penn Hills parent, said she appreciates the Penn Hills bus drivers because they know the children's names, wait for kids who are running late and coordinate with other drivers to swing by and pick up children who miss the bus.
"[The school board] has no clue how we bend over backwards and take care of these schools and these kids," said Bob Dasta, a Penn Hills bus driver for 27 years. "You're not going to get a private carrier to be that dedicated."
Mr. Liberto said that parents need not be worried about safety and quality because the district stipulated in its requests for proposals to the private carriers that they must hire Penn Hills drivers.
But some current drivers have said they wouldn't work for a contracted carrier because it would mean taking a pay cut of about 30 percent and losing benefits, sick days and seniority.
Mr. Dasta said if the district hired a private contractor, it would have no control over costs in the future.
Mr. Liberto countered that by contracting out, the school district would have more control over costs than it currently has.
"Actually, we have more control over our contracted price than we do over our own internal price because we have no control over what health care is going to do and we have no control over what the state does with PSERS," he said. "But we could and will control the cost of the contractor's price because, No. 1, we can always go out and put another [request for proposals] out, and, No. 2, we can always tell them that if they want to continue with our business here that they need to take a freeze just like we've done with everybody else."
