Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
Complaints about alleged poor service by the company that provides bus transportation to students in the Jefferson County School District, or more specifically Somerset School, animated a School Board discussion last week.
The extemporaneous discussion started when School Board Chairwoman Shirley Washington invited a member of the audience to share her thoughts on the transportation system. The woman, who never identified herself by name, told about witnessing an incident on WPA Road where a school bus had been pulled off at the side of the road and “six or seven deputy cars and an ambulance” were around it.
“There was a fight on the bus,” the woman said. “There have been problems on this bus for years.”
She told also of seeing an elementary school girl running alongside US 19 on another occasion because the bus driver had allegedly dropped the child off alongside the road far from her house. The woman said she had feared for the child's safety, given the traffic on the road. She told also of a person allegedly smoking pot in a bus, and a bus driver who refused to drive on dirt roads.
Washington wondered when the district was going to do something about the transportation problems. She asked if it was going to take a child getting killed or injured before someone would act?
School Superintendent Marianne Arbulu turned to School Board Attorney Tom Reeves.
“What is our recourse?” Arbulu asked.
Reeves suggested that the district request that Somerset look into the alleged incidents and report its findings to the board. If the charter school wasn't meeting its contractual obligations, he said, the district could start the appropriate proceedings.
School Board Member Sandra Saunders joined the conversation. She told about an alleged incident where a school bus carrying students to an out-of-county basketball game had been involved in an accident. The bus, she said, had proceeded to the game afterwards without ever notifying the parents about the accident. The only reason that she had learned about the incident, she said, was because one of the parents subsequently had had to take one of the children in the bus to the doctor when the child had complained about a pain.
Saunders segued into the alleged cannibalization of the school buses, which belong to the district but are contracted out to the bus service. By cannibalization, she meant that parts were being removed from the buses, for what reason she couldn't say.
“I think Somerset needs to do a walkabout of the bus lot,” Saunders said. “If things are happening like I'm being told are happening, we need to take care of it.”
Arbulu noted that without specifics, it would be difficult to get any response from Somerset. She did know, however, that Somerset Principal Cory Oliver wasn't particularly happy with the bus service, she said. As for the buses being cannibalized, Arbulu said she would be hard pressed to say why such a thing would be happening, given the poor conditions of some of the buses.
But the bottom line, Arbulu said, was that all that the district could do was ask Somerset.
“We have no teeth the way this thing is set up,” she said, referring to the contractual agreement between the district and the charter school. .
Someone else complained about the poor lighting at the bus lot, which the speaker suggested was a recipe for criminal activity.
School Board Member Bill Brumfield put the blame squarely on Ivory Luckey, the owner of School Bus Services Inc., the Tallahassee-based transportation company that contracts with Somerset to provide the transportation service.
“We need to address this and not let Mr. Luckey wiggle out the door like he's done before,” Brumfield said. “He's lied to us before. We need to have Somerset come back here and Mr. Luckey needs to be here.”
Arbulu said she would convey the board's concerns to Somerset officials and ask that they and Luckey appeared at the next school board meeting. districts.school bus transportation services company in the area and we are responsible for safely transporting students to and from school every day.
We are a non-profit corporation linking students to the quality education that they deserve, and committed to providing the highest level of safe, reliable and cost-effective student transportation. We have the expertise to provide a range of cost-effective, customized transportation solutions for families and school districts.