Deadlock delays Greater Latrobe board reorganization, vote on bus contract

Greater Latrobe School Board will hold a special meeting Thursday to reorganize and to act on a new busing contract — items the board didn’t resolve at a scheduled meeting Monday.

With Dr. Michael Zorch, Mike O’Barto and newly elected Paul McCommons absent, the six remaining board members were deadlocked 3-3 on the choice of a board president — between Zorch and Eric Hauser.

Hauser has been president for the past two years.

After four votes failed to break the tie, district solicitor Ned Nakles recommended scheduling the special session at 7 p.m. Thursday in the hope that more board members will be able to attend and break the stalemate.

The other business Thursday will be voting on a five-year busing contract, to begin on July 1. The board cannot vote on the contract until it has been reorganized, Nakles said.

Business administrator Dan Watson reported that a proposal from DMJ Transportation would cost the district about $1 million less over those five years than a competing proposal from current transportation provider A.J. Myers & Sons.

From the current annual contract cost of $2.7 million, Myers proposes increases of 2% in the first year, 2.94% in the second and fourth years and 1.47% in the third and fifth years, for a final cost of a little more than $3 million, Watson said.

DMJ would arrive at its final cost of about $2.8 million with an initial decrease of 5.9% and a 2.75% increase in each of the remaining four years.

A third proposal, from First Student, would increase the cost to nearly $3.5 million at the end of five years.

“Our transportation costs make up 6% of our general operating costs,” Watson said. “We definitely don’t take it lightly.”

DMJ representative Lisa Barron said her company, which services 17 school districts including Greensburg Salem and Mt. Pleasant Area, has GPS devices on all of its buses — a feature that Greater Latrobe would require Myers to add.

“This is not our first rodeo,” she said.

The new contract also would consolidate the district’s three morning bus runs into two, with students at the junior high and senior high starting the school day at the same time.

According to Watson, the district concluded that a common start time for all secondary students would “lead to better academic performance and greater overall efficiencies from an educational standpoint.”

Barron said DMJ would welcome displaced Myers drivers to join its ranks if DMJ wins the Greater Latrobe contract. Several Myers drivers told the school board they wouldn’t consider such a move.

Chastity DiFrancesco of Mountain View Drive in Unity said her 10-year-old hearing-impaired daughter doesn’t want to lose the familiar Myers workers who drive her to and from the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf in Pittsburgh.

DiFrancesco said the Myers driver “knows just by my child’s body language what might be wrong with her on any given day.”

She said other special needs students at the district similarly have become attuned to the current drivers.

“It’s not just numbers,” she said. “You’re voting on what happens to our children.

“These kids rely on familiarity, consistency and routine. It provides them with a safe atmosphere.”

A worker countered that DMJ has experience transporting special needs students to various schools around the region and is up to that task at Greater Latrobe.

Myers drivers said their vehicles are kept daily at the company’s property, where they can easily be maintained, while some DMJ drivers keep their buses at their homes. Barron responded that such vehicles are regularly seen by DMJ’s six-member maintenance staff.

Vice President James Myers said A.J. Myers & Sons saved the district more than $1.3 million during the course of the expiring contract.

“Five years later, you guys want us to take another million cut on top of that,” he protested, adding. “Our costs do not go down.”

He said Myers also invested about $4 million in equipment and facility improvements, noting it has not paid off the debt it incurred.

Company President David Myers asked the school board to table action on the busing contract, indicating he wants to schedule a private discussion on the matter with district officials.

Watson noted Myers’ initial suggestion of extending its expiring contract would have increased annual district costs by about $140,000 and “wasn’t very enticing for us.”

“We can’t kick this down the road much longer,” Watson said. “The new vendor has to order new buses. That just doesn’t happen overnight.”