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operation student transportation services contract this item provides an addendum to the agreement with first group America Inc doing businesses first student to provide various student transportation services for the 1920 school year it has recommended the district extend the agreement with first group America Inc doing businesses first student to provide various required and requested student transportation services eg regular education required special education ad a 504 McKinney Vento athletics fine arts various shuttle services charter and activity bus services etc from different funding sources not to exceed the amount of 33 million dollars depending on programming and enrollment needs this addendum will mark the 11th year with first student and the first of a 5-year contractually negotiated addendum after a 10-year contract that will be evaluated reviewed and presented annually to the Board of Education for approval for required regular education and special education home to school transportation this estimated amount is governed by the volume of services needed to transport students to and from schools and approved activity trips approximately 80% of special education transportation iepa iepa proved audited expenditures are reimbursed to the district by the state of Kansas during the school year the recommendation for 2021 school year is based on projected service quantities updated rates for a 173 school day calendar and a minor contingency amount for unexpected increases and/or emergency school relocations that may require transportation welcome this has been a long marathon our deal and even the intro was a long thank you dr. Mike first and foremost I am going to allow a couple members of our team that are presenting with me to introduce themselves so Jonathan waves from the purchasing manager for the district good evening Lisa Roberto's transportation director and of course I'm Fabio murder is the director of operations for the district first president Logan vice president rody superintendent Thompson members of the board I thank you for giving us the opportunity to come in here tonight and share with you what is the culmination of almost a year and a half process so as we continue we are going to present to you what the future of transportation for our district is going to look like we've structured the presentation in a way because it is such a complicated operation in many ways and I think a lot of our community often doesn't understand how complicated it is so we're going to give you a little bit of the 101 before we get into what is the addendum and then also the process that we followed some all right let me tell you how our transportation works first off we safely transport 16,000 students or a little more than that each and every day the greatest number of buses that we had on the road was in 2011 and we had 531 and that was underneath for students umbrella and this year we had a low of 396 and right now we're sitting at about four hundred and three buses maximum on the road at a time so we operate under a three-tier system and what this means is that one single bus driver can drive for three schools so they drive can drive for schools that start at 7:00 a.m. our schools that start at 8:00 a.m. and our schools that start at 9:00 a.m. our ultimate goal is to have as many of these bus drivers driving all three tiers as possible serving as many students as they can and we're pretty close to as efficient as possible 71 percent of our buses our triple tiered and what that means is that driver may be working a little over seven hours a day 26 percent of our buses are double tiered generally they are our eight o'clock start schools in our nine o'clock and then just three percent or actual that's rounded up a little bit less our single tiered for unique situations a big idea with what the work does of my team is they use the edge you lock software and with this software it helps determine where bus stops should be so that they are fair for all students who ride a bus it's very cool technology next I want to present some data and when I say we transport 16,000 students a day are more than that where where do those numbers come from who are we transporting and here's the deal about 39 percent of our students are live over 2.5 miles from the school and so that equates to about six thousand three hundred three hundred of our students being transported because they're far from school the two and a half or two and a half miles are further Meghnad and IB programs are four thousand two hundred of our students and these buses go all over the city they pick up kids all along the way to get them to their magnet school or their IB school hazardous is about 9.6 percent of the students that we transport that's 1561 students they just don't have a safe walk path to get to school but they live less than that two and a half miles we also transport students for special education services these are the students who were their IEP have transportation as a related service and that equates to about eleven percent of our students right around 1,700 and then e ll students their students just learning English and going to special programs or special schools for it for that service that equates to one thousand ninety two of our students about six percent space available our students who have a space available on a bus and get transported for that reason so they may not qualify it but their home is close enough to a bus stop and we have open seats so we allow them a pass on that bus and we have nine hundred and forty-one students who are on our buses for space available these are also our students who have been assigned from the hearing office mckinney-vento in ESS a that's two hundred and fourteen students they get to be transported to their base schools and then finally we have students who are transported as an accommodation on their 504 plan and that's 25 of our 16,000 students transported this data was taken from last spring and we get that data every spring to kind of compare at urine and who are we serving so at our 7:00 a.m. start schools we have 283 buses on the road right now 403 at our 8:00 a.m. start time and then 398 at our 9:00 a.m. start time so what that means is we have one thousand eighty four groups of students that get transported home to school in the morning and then again we have one thousand eighty four groups of students who get transferred in the afternoon so this right here is an example of what a bus drivers day may look like or what a bus does in this so if we go ahead and play this the first tier is a regular ed bus that goes up to Brooks and arrives there at 6:45 and then that bus takes off from Brooks and picks up students on a special a drought and ends up there at the middle school at 7:45 a.m. and then if we play it one more time we'll see that that driver picks up a few more students all around the city and then ends up at their 9:00 a.m. start school I'm restraining myself from singing the wheels on the back so in our current operation we do have some challenges and a lot of successes most of our challenges are attributed to the driver shortage right now we have an economy where there's not a lot of unemployment and therefore there's not a lot of available bus drivers it's when there's a driver shortage that makes the buses available for field trips less because the drivers are taking kids to and from school and they're not available to take kids on field trips also I bus runs we have to be as efficient as possible when we don't have any drivers they're scheduled with no flexibility they're timed out as much as we can there's no extra wiggle room there the buses are at Kapaa today we're picking up as many kids as we can and then also sometimes when they're timed out there's the opportunity to be late so we do have late buses if it can be a train or traffic or anything else like that when everybody's out driving sometimes the office staff room for student does serve our students in that capacity and then the customer service may be lacking if having people available to answer the phones and things like that this continual driver attendance concerns and then not necessarily it related to the driver shortage but we do have limited options for pairings when you do have magnet schools or programs buses are going all over the place and sometimes it's harder to pair them together and then flee our fleet current fleet is ten years old so we do have mechanical issues as any vehicle that's ten years old and so that's a challenge that we have but on the flip side we have a whole lot of successes one of the successes that we have is first view first view is the app where parents can see where their buses in real time and that is fantastic it's been a game-changer also our drivers and our monitors love kids and so I want to say that that's probably my favorite success is that they understand dream believe and achieve and they love what they do which is incredible there's almost 700 of them and they do what they do because they love our kids another success is that as our year goes on the performance of the buses improves and it's getting better and then another sistas is our contractor is so willing to be flexible when it comes to adding a transportation to Chester Lewis this year or early outs for a parent-teacher conferences or whatever we throw at them they can make it work and it's pretty incredible we work as a team with first students we see them as one at the transportation department in them and we work on goals together and also our current contractor for student is they are open to the Wichita transit partnership and they also have the ability to bring in guest drivers so this year we started the school year not having all of our bus runs covered with a driver and so they had con tracts and other parts of the country that hadn't started school yet so they brought in those guest drivers those guest drivers quickly learned Wichita and served our kids for a couple weeks until we could hire the people so that is fantastic in it and a great thing that they did for us uh we have a hundred percent pass rate for the start of your inspections which means at the beginning of the year all of our buses and meet the requirements to be on the road to safely transport our kids and then we have a 94% on-time performance rate as well so those are great successes that I really like sharing with you alright so here is our current contract it started as a seven year contract and then we had three year extensions so we're actually in our tenth year we control the number of school days in operation so when our schools days were longer than we had last days versus now we went back to the usual schedule that was in on us and then we also have we also tie our increases in price to CPI which is to inflation or kind of cost of living expense raises so at the beginning of last school year we started looking at the idea that our contract that we're currently in was going to end and what were we gonna do next we decided to probably be best to go out and solicit the marketplace see see what was going on out there we did have a initial proposal of pricing and contract terms from first student but we still felt like we needed to get out there see what was going on so we spent some time developing an RFP but ultimately decided we'd go out informally just to check out what was on the market see what kind of responses we could get and so we put it out there right around a winter break last year and over the next couple months we got a couple responses and brought those vendors in for presentations and spent about the next six months after that really working through our scope of work and things like that trying to get those two contract apples to apples as we possibly could and and see really what we were working with ultimately now we're coming to you to recommend for a student for continued continuation of this contract what we did find out whenever we're going through solicitation in the marketplace is due to our size were very limited as to what vendors would work with us it shifted cost has gone up technologies change things like that that are really affecting our bottom line right now and if we were going to reduce our costs we'd have to start looking at some other ways in terms of policy and things like that so now you know kind of a little bit of how we got here a little bit information about for student they are our division of first group America they are the largest student transportation provider in the country with its operating over forty four hundred and sixty locations across the u.s. and Canada they manage 1,100 contracts five million student journeys per school day in a fleet of forty two thousand five hundred buses so again and we are currently one of their not their largest contract in the country so as we look at the details of the the contract the first thing that I want to make clear is once once we got four students final proposal the committee made the decision to go with them at that point we decided it would be easier it's simpler for us to go for an addendum rather than create a whole contract altogether we already had a contract with them with a lot of the terms laid out so there was no need for us to reinvent the wheel so those changes and pieces that were a part of this agreement of the proposal then at that point we incorporated them into an addendum and that's how we're operating so just a few things about pricing first it's the same non variable pricing structure so we're operating under a similar pricing structure there doesn't mean that there isn't any variability but it is the same in pricing structure that were used to so we pay a certain amount per bus per day and we just multiply that by the number of routes that we operate and so that makes it simple for us to project into the future and to be able to budget for any potential increases the recommendation that we're bringing to you today for next school year the recommendation is for a maximum approval amount of 33 million last year for this current year when we came to you we came to you for 27 million so it is about a six million dollar increase year over year important to note as John John mentioned earlier when we solicited the marketer we begin through this process we knew that we were significantly under market three years ago when we did the extensions we we felt we were under we were on 20 percent under market so that only expanded over the last three years so as as we continue as a part of this then this sets a yearly increases at a set of two point five percent for any subsequent years and it is a five year addendum so those increases are set at a flat rate of two point five which makes budget planning a lot easier for Susan and her team as we look at consistency moving forward as a part of this addendum there is also an alternative vehicle expansion what that is is white fleet its vans that they're bringing into our market to be able to help with some of the unique transportation needs that we have those mckinney-vento students or perhaps those runs that have a handful of students on them will be able to utilize their vans the great part about those vans is not only are they cheaper than a traditional bus but they also don't require a CDL driver so that is kind of nice and to fully gives us flexibility but it also helps them utilize them as a pipeline for CDL drivers so drivers are maybe are not interested in driving a yellow bus today they could bring in to help drive those alternative vehicles and potentially maybe move them or transition and into a CDL driving role into the future the other part that I do want to make a little bit clarification on is their charter pricing those increases to that particular type of transportation are a little bit higher than the rest but there there is flexibility within that for us to be able to look elsewhere and partially is because they have to limit the number of buses that they that they make available during those school to home or school times because our primary focus for those drivers should be driving our kids to school and home and so as being able to go outside will allow our schools to have the flexibility to be able to take those field trips that maybe require them to be out a little bit longer so there is a little bit of flexibility within that as far as contract highlights that we have again it's an addendum for five years so we would be with first student through June of 2025 the technology enhancements are a huge part in a huge perk to this agreement that the first part that this addendum will bring his tablets as you all know technology has vastly improved over the last ten years I think we all greatly rely on this for everything from mapping to everything else as part of this they'll be able to bringing in tablets which will allow to give drivers turn-by-turn directions currently right now we're operating under an old paper paper system so it is not uncommon for drivers to be pulled on the side of the road looking to see their director they're handwritten directions this will allow them to get those turn-by-turn directions it will allow us to be able to also improve the operation because as we operate with subs especially when we're short they'll be able to designate if I if I sub is covering a particular route just automatically going to the system type in whatever route they're covering and send it to them automatically versus them waiting at the school for a paper for them to complete their route so those those tablets really have the potential to really change the way that we do business in our on-time performance video all of our buses are currently equipped with two cameras that will continue but the camera system that we're currently utilizing is obviously old and so they're hard they're hard drives that are on those buses that keep those recording under the current system attack from first student has to go out and pull them then after they pull them they take them back down load it to the lab they're their computers then they edit them and then at that point and once they edit them they do a play-by-play script that they write they send to our schools but if our schools want to view that video they have to travel to our bus Lots to be able to do it under this system it's an automatic as soon as those buses pull into the Lots it'll be an automatic download they'll edit them and then we're working with our ist department to create create a system for next year where we'll make those videos available to our schools on-site so no longer will our school staff have to travel to our bus Lots to be able to view video which is a huge huge benefit right now I can tell you think about South East High School they have to travel all the way out to the north lot which is at 2:35 in Meridian so they're losing a good hour to an hour and a half of work time they could be spending in our schools just to go view videos so this has the potential to greatly improve our productivity they're also adding an emergency radio channel which is going to allow for us to have continued communication so there's an emergency they'll flip to that channel without the need for us to do anything else so that will help and then first view as Lisa mentioned first view has been a benefit to our district first student has offered it to us as a part of this contract and they'll continue so we won't have to go out to get another vendor or another product it'll it'll continue as a part of that other pieces that are that are highlights new buses over the next couple of years they'll replace all of our buses so they'll replace 220 for this upcoming school year and then for the next school year then they'll replace the other 200 buses in our fleet integrated seats a lot of our special needs students and our pre-k kiddos require harnessing when they're transporting transported which creates issues especially when you're short drivers and you're sending a sub to cover often they get to the school but then they realize they don't have the right equipment so these integrated seats have the potential for us not to need that additional equipment because all you have to do is pull down the seed and and you'll have what you need to be able to transport students and then the last piece is increased wages in their commitment to increase driver wages is not just starting next school year but it is starting January of this year they've already began advertising the $18 an hour starting pay which is what they're going to and we've already seen that have a impact a positive impact in the recruitment as we're short a significant number of less drivers and we were at the beginning of the year so that is a big game-changer and on top of that they're also working on extended that the pay to our senior drivers so hopefully that will help on the retention end of things two additional details and these are things that are new as a part of this agreement that first student is bringing to us first serves it is a training program for special education transportation so they'll be offering our special needs drivers a special training that allows them to learn more about the types of students they transport it also includes tools that our students are going to be able to utilize for the bus ride some cool things some that we currently have in place obviously they've have a lot more money so they've been able to invest in a better product and so we'll be able to incorporate that to help us and help our our special needs students first feedback is something that I think you all are aware of it's a website first feedback comm that they have developed to help our community give them feedback and so anyone whether it's a community member whether it's a parent whether it's a staff member can log into first feedback comm and then type in whatever feedback they have we often hear from our community that bus drivers are speeding or whatever concerns they have about buses this will give them an avenue to be able to provide them feedback and will have access to the feedback they receive so that way we can communicate on how we can fix things in first acts is a behavior management reporting tool currently we operate under an antiquated paper system a five-carbon so if you want to really get to the bottom carve and you have to write really hard put a lot of pressure and so as part of this is this is an online actual reporting tool that we'll be able to utilize they've been gracious enough that they're customized singing to our need we have a district-wide behavior management program we utilize the work of safe in several schools and as part of our write up system is very specific for bus drivers so they're customizing it to meet our need and that will eliminate again the paper/pencil system it will also allow us to keep better track of behavior data because often we don't know if there are any sort of trends in terms of the behavior that we're seeing on buses outside when we get the hard paper then at that point we tabulate but this will be a more accurate tool for us to be able to analyze what's really going on in our buses and be able to address some concerns from a systemic standpoint driver recruitment and retention plan when they submitted their proposal to us we came back to them we knew that driver recruitment and retention was a key part a key concern for us because we've been short and so as a part of the what they submitted to us they presented to us a complete proposal of what they're planning to do to address that those not only include the driver wages which we talked about they're also improving the application flow they're working on customer service as a part of that and then they're also looking at addressing culture within the locations to help with some of that retention piece so they did provide to us and we're actually incorporating that piece a proposal piece that they gave us into the addendum as a part of the contract other things that are part of this improved service action plans last week they met they've asked us to identify several building principles bus supervisors district level department leaders and they individually met with every single one of those people to get their concerns to get their feedback and they are develop their developing issue specific action plans to address some of the concerns that our stakeholders have again the flexibility to continue and expand our WTA partnership another another key piece that I gotta give them credit for as you all know we've been doing a lot of work with our strategic plan and have implemented the four disciplines of execution as a part of our work first student has been a key member of that that piece they actually meet with Lisa to develop their goals and they also present not only as a part of the operations division piece but they also present it to do team more recently too so they have also you talked about that alignment of resources and infrastructure and they are also aligning their processes to what we're doing as a district and then the last piece is liquidated damages we are continuing the other is of liquidated damages portion to the to the addendum that's there we modified the liquidated damages chart to make it more useful so that way it allows them the data that were provided them for the liquidated damages that they can better utilize to help improve their systems so that is really kind of the key details that we we have as part of the agreement okay so now if you guys have questions for us that Julie does this process has been long and kind of grueling so I want to thank you and your team and three of your sitting here but you had some other members on the team as well yes we had members of Finance we also had members obviously of legal counsel transportation was represented that was part of our core team but when we did presentations we also brought in some building principals some department leads like athletics and then some of our levels of district level superintendent assistant superintendents or their executive director so when we when they did those presentations to look at what options we are out there we expanded that group a little further okay great well thank you for all that work and I think you showed on an earlier slide that you had seven vendors initially that presented information okay so so out of those three and you finally worked it out to come to this recommendation what tell us a little bit about that process and and why you decided that first student was the best of the three options such that you're recommending that tonight there were several factors obviously pricing is a key part of it again they the the pricing for first student and what they provided us was was better than the other options that we got out there not only to start out but also the set two and a half percent increases over the next few years which allow us to better plan financially their overall pricing structure is also more suited towards long term planning for us which was a crucial part of it and we knew as we engaged in this process that that down the line if we were going to have any sort of reductions in what we're paying for transportation we would need to do some infrastructure changes and under that pricing structure it gives us the flexibility to be able to do that obviously the the the the product offerings that they have all the add-ons and the technology pieces that they're able to bring also made our decision a little bit easier and then they are they are the largest vendor in the country so the infrastructure that they were able to bring from bringing in the guest drivers at the beginning of the year and some of the supports that they were able to provide also made them a better choice so we touched on it but I wanted to because I had a constituent question earlier today that specifically addressed whether a parent input district parent input was in the selection process now I know that's not typically you know we done but can you confirm that some of the people on the selection committee are also parents of students that are served by our transportation system we did have he's one person that is a current parent did they're a staff member but they are a current parent that was a part of that group okay and dr. Thompson I'm gonna fill in first Stan's role because he's not here so I'm going to do it probably is a request but um well we will we be receiving regular reports on performance of this contract as it plays out yes as he stated earlier in his presentation we will be receiving different types of data now because we have technology where we're able to track behavior data on the buses you're able to track like we already do on time you're able to attract track your recruitment and retention efforts there's just so many other things I can go on and on from the pages all of the things that we will begin to collect data upon and we will be then be able to bring back reports on a regular basis we also have had commitments from the different levels of the organization to also have regular ongoing conversations and problem-solving meetings to make sure that we together are ensuring that we have the best quality for our students in our community because I think one of the things that at least from my perspective as a board member input we receive is very like targeted it's very like there is a one specific problem at this specific incident and so I'm hoping that we can identify those kind of trends systematically and and work to correct them and not and and that is one of the things he just talked about at the example that he had given was that they were meeting with building administrators where there are hot spots is what we call them and those hot spots are places where we have you know some significant s are significant have some issues or concerns that need to be problem solved some problems need to be solved so what we do there is that you will be able to have a group a team of people that will be able to identify that and put a plan of action in place to support that school and the concerns that may be there if it is a systemic thing not necessarily one-on-one things but if there's a legitimate concern for the program at that particular site that is what we will problem-solve and work together as a unit to solve excellent thank you and the other part is our first feedback website to think it'll allow us as they're collecting data for us to look at it from a more of a systemic approach so if more of our community is giving that same type of feedback we'll be able to identify those trends and figure out what we need to address from that - so that is a great tool that I would encourage you all to as you hear feedback from the community - to promote also Mike as you know I'm mr. technology one of the things that you said concern me the use of tablets you know we have a texting and problem with people driving and paying attention to their their phones instead of going down the road and are these bus drivers going to be looking at their tablet instead of the road to see where they're going or how does how does that tablet work I think there's a significant level of training that will go along with that and I think there's there some limitation they'll be able to speak to it a little bit more than I am I know that that was a concern for years because we've been pushing them on tablets since I got to transportation in 2011 and I think one of their concerns with that safety component of it so I'm sure that there are there there's parameters there that I think they can explain a little bit better as as mr. Roslyn comes up okay thank you I appreciate that Julie yeah I also think we're gonna have an opportunity to to meet the CEO of her students but but I like Ben have had some have heard some comments from some community members and for the number of students we transport they're small but any child who has a concern any parent that has a concern for their child is important and we're concerned about we care about safety for all of our kids so I'm wanting to hear and Fabien has named a few of them a few of the examples but I'm wanting to hear how customer service is going to improve with this extension of our contract so that some of those customer service issues that we've heard of as board members currently with first student how how we can have confidence as a board that if we approve this addendum how in the future we're going to be able to have some greater accountability and a higher level of customer service performance absolutely and I'm going to at this time turn to Fabi on so that he can introduce our guests so that they can have an opportunity unless you have a response but I'm not and I hope I'm not stealing his thunder so but I but as part of what we ask them to give back to us before we made a final decision was for them to create a customer service plan so I know that they've been working on doing customer service training over the last month and a half they're also again looking at their phone system because there were some limitations with their phone system so they're looking at doing some phone system upgrades that's gonna allow them to do better service but again I don't want to say too much so where's us today as we move forward with this we wanted their district leadership as we know that there have been some discussions and we wanted them to come back and and and to really talk to you and tell you what they see the future of first student in this community will be so I'm gonna introduce mr. Paul Ashland who is the president of first student thank you very much for coming tonight we appreciate this opportunity to meet you and dr. Thompson and the rest the board it is great to be with you here tonight John billig Mayer our regional vice president who lives here in Wichitas is with me as well Lisa and Fabien guys did an awesome job I want to borrow that little bus routing call sometime soon that is that is terrific by the way these folks some I interact with over a thousand customers across North America and you're very well represented by Lisa and Fabien they are passionate advocates for your schools and they are passionate advocates for your taxpayers it has been a grueling process to get to this point and by the way I think I saw Tom Paul wander and he fits that same category as well he is my respect for him has grown this process and he's a very strong advocate for the district you're I'm very well served to have all of these folks thank you for allowing me to come here this evening thanks for the relationship we've had over the 10 years we are very anxious to build off of that relationship and to invest continue to invest in improving service and improving that relationship there have been some challenges over the course of this contract as it's really become rather stale it's become stale in terms of pricing and we have we have taken the financial burden of that we've not stepped away from that I'm over the last 10 years we've taken driver wages from $12 when we started this contract up to starting now of $18 so it's actually going up 50% whereas the actual pay in this contracts going up about 22% so we have we have stepped up and moved those those price points up but we have record unemployment it's a 50-year low unemployment across the country a 20-year low as I understand it here in Wichita and the reality is we had to continue to be vigilant about who we harder to do these things these are hard jobs they're challenging jobs they're done by great people that are mission driven just like all of you folks are and all of us that are in this industry are we've always been very good at recruiting if you see us out you should see us out in the communities every week we're out in the communities we always have been that way this location from our perspectives and how we measure these things has been a relatively well-run location we fact over the past year we had fought we secured over 550 applications but as we've announced as a part of these discussions we've accelerated that increase we plan for next fall when the money was there to pay for we accelerate the January 1st we've seen 380 applications over the last two months and that and we have a check today we have 27 people in training we have a hire driver number than we've had in a long time we're in a position to start take on additional routes which is what's occurring now so we see the first step relative the questions about services we've got to get this thing staffed and and by the way I appreciate the the comments and the recognition for bringing drivers in from places like Minnesota before Labor Day I don't really want to do that's a very expensive thing to do and you really don't want me to do that we all want Wichita residents driving Wichita routes that's what makes the best service whether your special needs child a homeless child or regular education child so we our scope and scale does allow us to do those things it's not the best thing for service it's certainly not the best thing for financial performance of a contract and it's really not a best thing even for the community the best thing is to be fully staffed so that our folks are sitting in the chairs they should be in dispatch to answer phones to work with Lisa and her team to make sure our kids are getting to school every day so I think a part of this improvement certainly relates the investment we're making in in driver wages and recruiting and retention and you're seeing those benefits now the fact is that we've accelerated some of those again but I don't want to sense you to get this sense we've not actively managed this contract we have and I've been close to this I've been with first student for about three and a half years I've been in the industry for seven or eight years I am new to the president role but I'm very operation oriented I've been here four or five times or continue to be worked very closely with dr. Thompson and the rest of the team and my predecessor is chief operating officer Dean Suri same thing very operations guy will stay very close to this so as we work through this process and from the perspective and Cincinnati and headquarters is all of our metrics say this is a well-run location that has some challenges around driver shortage driven by the wages were paying which is not unusual 85 to 90 percent of the districts across the country have challenges with driver shortages right now CDLs are hard to come by these jobs by nature the market decides what they're paid all right we can pay these drivers or whatever you want to pay him but somebody has to pay for them so it's not unusual to have a driver shortage but the other piece that we received very clearly from our client here is there's other things involved here that we need to make sure we pay very close attention to we all want to feel like we're very value than we come to work every day it doesn't matter if your job is president of the school board whether you're president of a two and a half billion dollar company whether you're the janitor the food service person or a paraprofessional you want to feel you're really valued so we are working real hard on that we feel like we were doing a good job with that we checked their drivers survey scores and we have actually recently done customer service training for all of our staff at our locations we have you know safety programs that are very positive oriented in terms of their approach be safe programs four to one ratio for positive reinforcements when you see someone going up the steps I chuckle every time I'm out at the location there's a there's a railing there that was put in place I think to put my name on it maybe we're safety I mean we want positive when we see a driver coming off a bus and taken as a you know using the handrail we call three points of contact the ideas that recognize that as a positive thing not just pointing out the negatives so we do a lot of things to try and give drivers and aides and everyone to feel good about coming to work every day because attendance is important and retention is critical retention is critical is a lot of turnover in this industry this type of work really fits some people's schedules great but are like kids to begin with but you know it's a part-time work that's tough work you getting up at 6:00 in the morning in a cold winter and coming to work and run on a split shift and particularly you guys went through a shorting shorter schedule there for a couple of for that those two years you know made for a longer day with not necessarily more pay to it so it has to be the right people that we do that with so our commitment is strong the technology piece is important all this has been to us we've been leaders on everything from the everyone off thing that makes sure when you turn the key off you have to walk to the back of the bus and not leave a student on the GPS those are all things that our company has developed over the years and I think tablets will be this the same thing so we're working state by state because the state regulatory authorities Mike have the same questions and concerns these tablets won't be interactive once you're on the bus they actually will let you summon a driver know if he's speeding or not that is a good thing to know they will have the turn-by-turn directions there when needed but they won't be interactive where the drivers necessarily interacting with them but they will there be helpful there when someone is on a route that they have not been on before instead of looking down at a sheet of paper which they would be doing anyway they'd have something dynamic in front of them and I think it will help us as we make changes in routes as well you know with a lot of special-needs students and medic any event tell kids and stuff changes to occur pretty frequently so encouraged about tablets we're still rolling them out really for the first time in five or six locations we're gonna settle that make sure the tablets are settled in we're starting to we are starting the implementation here in terms of putting the brackets on and getting the tablets ordered but we want to make sure we've got everything worked out and and trialed appropriately before we roll them out in a full way here here in Wichita I think Fabien might have done a better job than I could talking about first acts and the feedback and some of those things so I think I'll leave that alone but those are things we're excited about right it's a good way of capturing if we have a driver that's doing things that he or she shouldn't be doing and somebody's calling and complaining it really needs to be documented and a place we can see that by the way we have a bunch of tools you know when you're a location manager working for first student you come in every morning you get a daily dispatch it tells you who was speeding the day before who was accelerating fast who was braking hard who was idling excessively and we're taking that leveraging that further and the drivers scoring and all sorts of things like that but it still gets back to all that technology we bring it gets back to the people that manage it it's people like carrie dixon that's here and the local team has a huge part and their mindset and and again as an Operations personnel the technology's nice and it's enabler but what matters is the people in the culture and the partnership again I think this is a partnership and that's why probably as much as anything I'm really pleased it will continue the relationship if this extension is approved because I am we do be this as a partnership we're very involved in the community you should see those things we do that every year all sorts of things because we want to be good community stewards anyway it's a bit about first student and a bit about why we're here any questions Ron thank you sir for being here I was just wanting to find out some of my colleagues had talked about earlier about constituencies and you know people asking us about different things about transportation sure what this is always puzzling to a lot of people but if somebody says well how come we can't buy vehicles that are run on alternative fuel or electric or so on yeah but what comes first is it something that the company has to make purchase and then sell it to us or do we have to request it so how do those things happen in I mean is it really feasible to even have you know that kind of alternative yeah so obviously a really important subject across the world right now and it's it does tend to manifest itself into the request for proposals so oftentimes it's pretty customer driven we run propane buses a lot of places we run some CNG buses some places we're now running seven or eight electric buses but atelic electric buses cost four or five hundred thousand dollars and somebody has to pay for that and they've got come with their own safety challenges too these are really high voltage things batteries that when they start on fire they burn there's no way of putting them out you let them burn so there's a variety of things that go with that so if the district was intent on on propane we could do that it's not what was negotiated here respect we could now those things have some limitations to if you have a longer you're going to take the team you know up to Kansas City for a game you're not going to do it on propane unless you've got places to fill it on along the way again has some other safety and training implications that we all have to pay a lot of attention to because that stuff's very volatile as well but there but but it is typically customer driven and and there is electric is an area where there's a lot of industry interests so what's attractive about school bus is relative to the electrification as it comes back to the same place which means you got place to plug it in and it doesn't run a ton of miles I mean typical school bus might run twelve thousand miles a year versus an over road over the road truck which could run ten thousands of miles a year so on the surface it's attractive but it's like any new technology the government entities got to be part of that the electrical industries got a part of that usually there's some grants involved that need to be a part of that up in Quebec Canada for instance they're pretty progressive or running seven or eight buses there but they actually put an RFP out that included the district had already received the the grants and hence you only needed like a 20% premium on the price so it's like a lot of things if you have the budget for it we can do about anything but most districts in the end have the interest and not necessarily the budget yet but there is a pretty good sense at 10 20 years from now a substantial part of the yellow bus market will be electrified there is there is that view so we deal all time with we deal directly with Daimler which makes Thomas buses we deal with International Navistar which makes international these of them really have a electric bus that's market ready yet there's a company called Lyon bus that has one and they're running some mostly manufactured in Canada but lots of questions like the length of the battery just is an open question who's gonna pay for those batteries because they probably need to be repurchased before the a 10 year cycle is up you can deal owed those things so part of the value of having a yellow bus fleet might be that you do some load sharing plugged in to the market but that gets back to all the different entities they have to be involved to make that work good question Ron I think you have to consider I have two questions one is about the tablets and I know I just been on out of town and I used my phone for my GPS and it talked to me so I didn't have to be looking at the tablet well your tablets be verbal you had also asked about distractions with these tablets when our tablets when the vehicle starts moving the screen goes blank and it becomes completely audible so the turn-by-turn directions become audible if the the vehicle is speeding there's an audible warning until the bus stops that screen stays off once the bus stops this Green comes on the driver at that point while the vehicle is stopped can check those next turns check his next stops whatever they need to do count kids on count kids off will be a part of this as well so that there's some student tracking abilities with these so to answer your question simply yes that it will be very audible thank you and my second question is I know that says this is a five year addendum to our contract is there anything built into this to extend it or would we be renegotiating in five years there there is an any extension built in at this point that doesn't mean we couldn't come to the table and discuss but now it's just five years a lot of good information I still didn't hear a commitment to every single one of our parents in our district that has a concern especially a safety concern regarding their kids and a commitment to working through those issues so that we can ensure our parents and our students are gonna have absolutely 100% safe transportation all right so here's what I will tell you I will give you a commitment that we're kind of work with all your principals with all your parents with your with your representatives here to run them up the safest highest level of service that you can procure from anyone what I cannot commit to you or your parents is things that things will not happen when you are running 400 buses three tiers in the morning you run a very efficient Network it's designed it's part of my praise of these people run being good at what they do they run an efficient Network if you have an under livable child on the first two in the afternoon because the parent of a one year olds an authorial first graders not there those buses are going to be late at the second and the third tier if there's a train that pops up and is delayed those routes are going to be slow sometimes employees bite how well you've backed you think you've trained them and your background check them they will disappoint you in the decisions they make and my guess is that happens the schools as well and it's gut-wrenching when it happens but it happens and and so things will happen and we're not all perfect people oh and it's a partnership here right so these folks are doing the routing for instance I think we'll be in a position if you want to run 440 buses will run 440 buses but I don't know that the district and taxpayers want to pay for 440 buses so you're constantly trying to figure out how do I make it a little more efficient and seventy one percent triple tiered and 26% double tier is pretty darn good by industry standards but that means things are tight it does it means things are very tight you know if kids are slow coming out of a school in the afternoon when I you know I spent a lot of time with superintendents and their principals and in a I've come away a lot of times with recognizing a lot of the complaints are coming from the second and third tiers and again it's just the dynamics that happen and I'm gonna the right thing is to use that bus efficiently right we're out spending eighty ninety thousand dollars on a bus and a driver I'd much rather that driver have a six or seven hour day than a four hour day or it's really hard to find him and you'd much rather be X payers would much rather pay for that bus to be used three times a day in the in the morning 3:00 in the afternoon then by three times more buses and single-tier I was in actually in Lisa's position at Chicago Public Schools and our cost per student was over ten thousand dollars a student I think here it was like 16 not sixteen hundred because we were like one and a half times tiered because principals could do what they want with bail times and then you had a tea magnet schools and special needs and homeless kids and so you just not run in full buses so my point is obviously our commitment not just culturally but system-wide will be to service everyone to the best of our ability and it doesn't mean you won't get some if my child's consistently getting late and I'm calling Lisa's folks and I'm not comfortable eventually I'm gonna call my school board remember and tell them I've got a problem thank you Mike very in my mind a complicated question it'll take me a little bit to get it out sure it can concern budgeting that we're looking at in the future and what has happened in the past with first student a couple of years ago we had a budget deficiency and we had to cut programs you know because of the state not giving us money which isn't your fault I get that but we we got hit with a change in contract mid midterm that we had to vote on that wasn't very comfortable for me to do we in our infinite wisdom with our State Board have a deficiency coming at us in a couple of years because they're underfunding they didn't fund that's right that's if the legislature pays attention in the future and doesn't change what the State Board is presented you know so we're looking in two years possibly a deficit to our budget which means we're gonna have to cut something right what what answers would first student have for us because I would rather cut busing than social-emotional programs I was first student I guess the the correct way to ask is what how would for a student work with us yeah to make our budget stabilized so that we're not hurting our children's education and giving them everything they we can in the classroom while still getting them to the classroom and I understand that's a big part of it too sure good question Mike and they first mentioned that this that negotiated agreement three years ago was every bit as painful to me as it was to you and your shortened school year was very painful to me I've we have been upside down in this contract the last three years and that to your point we signed the contract and even made some minor adjustments to it three years ago but we have been subsidizing student transportation here for three years and at some point we had we've got to get it right going forward we're not recapturing anything behind even the stuff we're doing this year that wage changes a million out of our pocket to get that accelerated it's the right thing to do fabien mentioned that the structure they put in place here allows for an increase or decrease in the number of buses without us fighting over it so part of the price increase think with the price increase that's coming here part of it is again driver wages are up 50% because that into the market for any any work I mean turn on the radio amazon's hiring everybody's hiring for holiday stuff has gone up where rates have gone up 22% so that's a big piece Lisa mentioned there Fabien that we run in 536 buses in 2010 now we're running just over 400 that's stranded a lot of fixed costs the technology stuff so all that stuff so it's driving what now would be an equilibrium I think a very fair price and by any metrics you've looked at certainly at the market or below the market now if you want to cut the thing in a couple of years because you have to and I understand you're we're not here that you want to spend your money on principals and great teachers and great pair of professionals and that's what you want to do the way of doing that is changing programs then because you've got to get buses off the street to get the cost down in the end and we've got a contract that allows us to do that now as a vendor we work with with our districts we have a group of 20 people to do routing we have first planning solutions because the real key to efficiency these folks have already figured out is really the utilization of the bus so the that's far better than you know you take to change your walk zone from two and a half to three and a half but that's usually a really poor way of reducing expense it doesn't get you much it disrupts a lot of people your phones will ring off the hook here that you'll be hated and you won't get cut many buses because you're already not running full buses in all cases so the key is you have to cut you have to wait to cut some buses and figure out how to do that together now we do that all time coop early with with I'm sure we do it today we suggest hey we're tight here's routes we see that aren't working as well or here's two routes that can get combined so in the park a bus will do that in some cases unfortunately we've had to do that commit on the driver the driver right and then you say hey that doesn't work I think I like running one less bus because it cost me less money so we'll always work cooperatively on that but in the end is to be honest with you I mean the number of buses has to come down for my cost to go down I mean we are a private enterprise well we've subsidizes the last three years it's not my goal to subsidize public education it's my goal to be the most efficient and effective so that people choose to use me and I can still make some sort of return to buy these vehicles and pay my people a living wage I appreciate that and one question I want to make sure that I'm clear on something here and I guess so that everybody in the world is clear on this we're talking about a change from 27 million dollars a year to 33 million dollars a year in busing that's yeah that's the approval amount of the request and I think that's important for people to hear because they say we're spending money strangely and our legislators pound us all the time but basically a large percentage of our budget is just getting the kids to and from school and I don't think a lot of people understand that and I guess the the backside question of that is and I haven't heard the heard this in any of the presentations is we're paying for the fuel now for these buses to run are we going to continue to pay for the fuel yes that's part of that's part of this doing that so we'll still have another what does that run two million dollars a year in fuel depending on the fuel prices yeah it varies greatly I do think probably a million a half to two but I'm not I know fuel prices are down which is fantastic and I wish we had big tanks we could start filling them up but so we could hedge on the price so well basically we're talking about 33 million plus another one and a half to two million so 35 million dollars a year for busing which is going to be increased 2.5 percent yeah in annually which is compounded and that's where our state board screwed up was they didn't compound our our CPI and again so we're gonna pay the compound to get the buses and this is kind of a little speech and I'm sorry but I gotta get this out I have no place to go Mike go ahead I'm here for the night but I just want people to realize when they come at us with budget questions that this is a big deal this isn't just lets you know they they don't you don't see this it's kinda like it's not in the schools we don't see it we don't hear about it unless somebody screws up and I think people need to realize from a budget standpoint this is important a big deal and I appreciate what you said because that's puts me at ease if we run into troubles we can negotiate and you'll control your expenses you do you'll control your expenses but it's decisions you'll have to make and work together but by cutting buses you'll save money and your conversation was was very well welcome explaining why you need the increase because you know that's the first time I've really heard that I've heard it but not heard it I've felt it every month I used to used to own a business and I understand and just and just sighted I that that 33 million approval is I believe accounting for or budgeting for 420 420 daily routes that doesn't mean well we'll run 420 so there's a possibility that number could be lower but at least for now because we don't know what our enrollment is gonna be like a year from now whether we'll have increases or not but again we we budget it because we feel 420 buses is where we should be at that's where we set the current pricing at and they approval amount also I appreciate all your hard work guys I mean and I appreciate you're willing to work with us I really do I don't mean to come across this grumpy you're hang on I've been on your side and not that's that's your job I'm at so it's said these people are very good stewards of the taxpayers dollars it's been a long process for all of us I understand your concessions and I and I appreciate appreciate all that and plus your your staff and your your help it's been been wonderful thank you very much anything else we still have a couple of questions bedroom it's just a short one and it's just not really a question of course but but I had to take off my school board hat and put on my engineer at spirit hat for a bit and say that we're sorry about the the trains full of airplane parts that stopped buses Julie just to follow up on the redo reducing the number of buses to reduce our costs that would mean would be reducing service the service cope so and we've talked about that we brought you guys some potential options you know whether it's increasing the walk distance to stop which we're pretty generous on anything from static stops which were mentioned changes to the magnet transportation but there are III do feel we are running as efficiently as possible when you talk about the significant reduction that I think anything additional is going to require a policy change on your behalf in order for us to lower its correct by a nickel for every time someone considered bail time changes but then not implemented them or policy changes I mean it is it's an attractive to look at and very challenging as you guys know as elected officials to execute okay I am seeing no other questions and we really do appreciate all of you all of our staffs work on this and your company and your coming here to talk to us thank you very much thank you very much you do think we need to have a motion on this because you're wanting a motion for us to extend this contract this addendum correct that's correct accept this contract my second okay there was a motion to accept the addendum as proposed it was moved by Mike and second by Ben please cast your vote motion passes 5-0 congratulations thank you very much great to continue in Wichita thank you dr. Thompson great to see you again before we close I would be remiss if we didn't recognize you talk about the efficiencies from our system really the reality is we're not it's our team our internal team that does a lot of that and we have some members of our team back there so if you guys wouldn't mind standing up so we can recognize you for the work that you guys do obviously they're happy with me because I just did that but there's a there's a heartbeat I think first we have another some more teammates that are here too thank you very much you will all sleep better tonight [Laughter] continuing and