The fix is in for school bussing

Jeff Green | Nov 19, 2009

Editorial by Jeff Green

There is something to be said about services that are locally run and locally managed, particularly when they are well run.

Removing the management of a service from the people who deliver it, particularly in rural areas where there are back roads to be navigated will not an improvement, even if it means saving a few dollars in the short run.

This is what will be faced by families that put their children on school busses each day when a competitive bidding process takes hold for school bussing.

While local school boards did not initiate this process, and in our region they seem reluctant to embrace it, the push is on from the province to change the way companies receive contracts for bussing children to school.

It's not as if the current bussing companies, which in rural areas are often mom and pop operations with 1 to 5 bus routes, are getting rich bringing their neighbours children to school.

The school boards, in our case represented by a Tri-Board bussing consortium, determine the pay scale and everything is provincially regulated. The operators have not seen a raise for years, and the fluctuating price cost of fuel is now and will continue to be the largest factor in the cost of bussing.

The Independent School Bus Operators Association of Ontario (ISBOA) was created a year ago for one purpose, to fight against competitive bidding in bussing, which is being brought in incrementally across Ontario. The Ministry of Education plans to set out “Requests for Proposal” for every bussing route in the province by 2013, and the ISBOA claims, with the backing of research in other jurisdictions, that this will concentrate school bussing in the hands of three multinational corporations and will put most small operators out of business.

While the ISBOA are a lobby group, and they represent people who have nothing to gain and everything to lose from this process, logic tells us that moving the control of services far away from the communities where they are delivered is a risky move.

Most of the small operators will be gone. Companies will bid on all the contracts in a region, and after a short time will inevitably start to say they cannot deliver service to more remote students for the price they originally quoted.

With the local companies out of business, the large players will tell the school boards they must either increase the amount they are paid for remote routes, or the children will need to be gathered together to central locations for pick up, or both.

Either way, no cost savings and diminished service will be the result.

Oh, and another sector of local business-people will have gone out of business.

Essentially, the school bus system in our region is not broken, but it will be once the fix is in.