Financial details of busing pact released

The school board was heavily criticized by residents at previous meetings for withholding the calculations used to find the cheapest busing option

The Daniel Boone School District has released the estimated total costs of a newly approved seven-year contract for student bus services with Krise Transportation of western Pennsylvania.

The Krise contract replaced a longstanding agreement between Daniel Boone and bus service providers Klein Transportation and New Rhoads Transportation, both of Amity Township, which had handled student transport since the district’s founding in the 1950s, according to school officials.

The contract’s 6-3 approval by the school board in May was heavily opposed by some residents and employees of Klein and New Rhoads.

Board members Asheli Godfrey, Kevin Stroble, Bucky Scott, Tanya Bell, Russell Jirik and President Julia Olafson voted in favor of the Krise deal. Beverly Albright, Jennifer Leone and Christen Thompson voted no.

Those opposed raised issues with what they said was a lack of transparency in decision making and a lack of answers as to how a nonlocal company would achieve the same quality and consistency of service.

Board members supporting the contract and district administrators said the switch to Krise was financially motivated. They said the Krise contract would save the district about $1 million compared wth the Klein and New Rhoads proposal.

At a school board meeting June 6, many residents said they were upset with the district’s refusal to publicize pricing details of the Krise contract. Representatives from Klein and New Rhoads took issue with what they said was a misrepresentation of their contract’s costs.

In response to those criticisms, board president Julia Olafson said she would release her own price comparison between the two contracts.

A pricing schedule was released and is available on the district’s website in a question-and-answer sheet, which also addresses other concerns raised by residents over the contract.

The schedule compares the six-year costs of Krise to two options for a Klein and New Rhoads contract.

The first option pegs the Krise contract as $540,000 cheaper than Klein and New Rhoads, while the second shows the district would pay $1.4 million less with Krise.

Some who spoke at the June 6 meeting also accused the district of showing preferential treatment to Krise and mishandling the bus vote.

At that meeting, resident Melissa Marques drew a comparison between Daniel Boone’s handling of the Krise contract and a similar situation in the Scranton School District, where in March an injunction was granted against the district starting a contract with Krise.

In a scathing opinion, Lackawanna County Judge James Gibbons wrote that Scranton conducted a “charade of negotiations” by changing its request for proposals after receiving multiple bids but only informing one bidder of the changes: Krise.

The court banned Scranton from entering the Krise contract and ordered the district to hold another bid “in accordance with basic standards of fairness.”

That lawsuit was filed in February by bus service provider Pete’s Garage, Lackawanna County — one of the bidders for Scranton’s contract — after the district voted to enter a five-year agreement with Krise.

During the testimony, Scranton officials admitted to allowing Krise alone to change its bid multiple times, letting the firm step outside the bounds of the initial contract requirements and not updating Pete’s Garage after the district changed the bus count specified in the request for bids, according to reporting from the Scranton Times-Tribune.

Scranton then voted early in June to approve a contract with Pete’s Garage, following a second request for proposals.

Krise’s new proposal only offered partial coverage of the district, and Scranton instead opted for full coverage with Pete’s, the TimesTribune reported.

Shortly before the Scranton School Board voted to approve the Pete’s Garage contract, it received a letter from Krise, threatening action to recoup a loss of $408,000 from the canceled contract.

The letter blamed the school board for illegally violating the bidding procedures and causing the court-mandated voiding of the Krise deal, according to the Times-Tribune.

Krise said they predict the fallout from the Scranton situation will cost the company about $840,000 in total.

Klein and New Rhoads offered no comment when asked if they planned to pursue legal action against Daniel Boone.