Moss: Beaufort County schools will save on busing without Durham

While one Lowcountry school district saw its costs increase after cutting ties with Durham School Services last year, leaders with the Beaufort County School District maintain they will save money by bringing school bus services in-house next year.

The Dorchester 2 School District, located near Charleston, is spending an extra $800,000 on busing this year because it made vast improvements under its new in-house busing plan. That included hiring more drivers and adding bus routes, according to Dorchester 2 chief financial officer Allyson Duke.

The Beaufort County School District won’t be making changes to that extent next year, meaning it won’t take a financial hit by transitioning to an in-house busing and staffing program, Superintendent Jeff Moss said.

“You can’t do a comparison to what (Dorchester 2) is doing,” Moss said. “They went well over and beyond what they were doing with Durham.”

The district will save about $900,000 that Durham was asking for in its next contract to cover higher administrative costs and driver raises, according to Moss. But Beaufort County schools will have to shoulder about $870,000 to add routes to the new May River High School and alter other school routes, meaning the district will pay an estimated $5.6 million on bus services next year rather than the $6.5 million Durham sought.

The past two years, the district has paid Durham $4.69 million, about $460,000 more than its first contract with the company in 2010, according to district spokesman Jim Foster.

The district’s exact transportation budget, including the number of buses it will lease and drivers it will hire, is not yet known because the district must first determine the number of routes it will run next year. Still, it began advertising for new bus drivers and monitors on Tuesday, and Moss said he anticipates hiring about a dozen administrative and staff members, including a transportation director, mechanics, supervisors and routers.

The Beaufort County school board has also approved the leasing of up to 41 new buses next year, the same as Durham is currently providing. Those buses will be supplemented with ones from the S.C. Department of Education that provided 149 buses this year.

The new in-house busing program ends the district’s five-year relationship with Durham, the latest in a line of companies the district has used over the past two decades.

Other districts rely, train and hire staff themselves. In neighboring Jasper County, for example, four administrators oversee a staff of 39 drivers, whose hourly wages start at $10.55, according to transportation director Deloris Dunham.

Another district in the state to outsource that service and a portion of its bus fleet is Charleston County. It also contracts with Durham, though it has reportedly experienced problems with the company. Since January, that district has withheld 10 percent of its monthly payments to Durham because it has failed to provide “consistent and reliable service,” The Post and Courier newspaper reported in March.

Dorchester 2 also experienced problems before ending its contract last year, and said it hoped to minimize break-downs, late buses and staffing shortages by going in-house.

Duke says she’s been satisfied with the results, which involved a big recruitment push for new drivers.

“It’s running very well,” she said. “I don’t know if we have all the drivers we need, but we’re a lot closer to what we need.”

Attempts to reach a Durham representative were unsuccessful Tuesday.

This story was originally published April 12, 2016 at 4:52 PM with the headline "Moss: Beaufort County schools will save on busing without Durham."