Schools continue to seek savings

By Harold Gwin

The goal is to have a company in place this summer so changes can be made this fall.

YOUNGSTOWN — The city school district is ready to seek proposals for a transportation consulting service it hopes will reduce student busing costs.

The school board’s business committee, which has been handling the search for a transportation management company since last year, gave its approval this week to the terms of a request for proposals to be sent to transportation service companies.

Now, both the full school board as well as the state fiscal oversight commission, which has been controlling city school-district finances since the state placed Youngstown under fiscal emergency in November 2006, must approve the document as well.

It calls for the contractor to provide five specific services: Digital video recording/global positioning system equipment on 60 city school buses, computer software for bus preventative maintenance and replacement scheduling, software for tracking bus routing, software for school bus-driver payroll accounting and general consulting services.

The contract won’t turn the district transportation program or the district’s employees over to the consulting company. Business committee members have made it clear they intend to honor the employee contracts, and any changes in personnel would have to be made by the school board.

The business committee already has one preliminary proposal from Community Bus Services Inc. which is promising it can cut $500,000 from the district’s annual $5 million transportation bill.

There was some initial confusion about the proposal document presented to the committee by Tony DeNiro, assistant superintendent for school business affairs.

Committee members Michael Murphy and Lock P. Beachum Sr. said it appeared the request for proposal was asking for separate bids on the five components of the contract.

The committee wants a single bid on the entire package, Murphy said.

The document, as written, requires that but also will give the school board a breakdown of costs for the individual components, DeNiro explained.

Murphy said the district hopes to have a transportation-service company on board some time in July so that any cost-cutting changes can be implemented by the start of school this fall.

DeNiro said the district has “gone as far as it can go” in enacting its own transportation cost reductions internally.

Cutting the number of bus routes from 64 to 41, reducing the fleet from 91 to 73 buses, negotiating a reduced-cost contract for special-needs students and closing the bus garage on the city’s East Side have resulted in $1.7 million in annual savings, DeNiro said.

gwin@vindy.com