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Schools

Wilcox may turn to bus experts

The school superintendent presents his transportation reorganization plan, saying he has reason to doubt previous changes have been made.

By THOMAS C. TOBIN
Published February 22, 2005

LARGO - Lacking confidence in a bus system reeling from the recent deaths of two students, Pinellas school superintendent Clayton Wilcox said Monday he is seeking help from three companies that specialize in transporting school children.

At a minimum, Wilcox said, he may hire one company to review safety measures that were supposed to be imposed after the October death of Clearwater High School student Rebecca McKinney. Those measures included changing 300 bus stops that required children to cross multiple lanes.

"I want to make sure that we actually did what they said we did," Wilcox said of his transportation department.

Asked why he doubted the department, Wilcox said too many residents are still contacting him to report cases of children crossing multiple lanes, the problem that led to the deaths of McKinney and 8-year-old Brooke Ingoldsby on Feb. 11.

"Citizens now are calling me and saying, "I still see it going on,"' he said.

Wilcox said he has considered the possibility of seeking an outside company to run the school bus operation.

"I haven't shut the door to anything," he said. "Would I move to privatize management? Absolutely, if it was a better mousetrap."

His statements followed a School Board workshop Monday in which he outlined how he planned to reorganize the transportation department.

His plan, expected to be approved today by the School Board, includes:

--Hiring four new top employees.

--Transferring four more employees in from other departments.

--Giving bus drivers better access to supervisors.

--Opening a call center to field complaints and questions about bus routes and to solve problems.

The call center would affect the public most directly, but the district said it would not be operating until July. Until then, the district plans to make do with the current system, which officials said Monday was still lacking, despite a state of heightened alert since McKinney's death.

The district has been showered with complaints about how the department fails to respond to parents who call with problems, including the parents of the two dead girls.

Three people at the department's help desk answer complaint calls from parents, and four secretaries are available to help when the volume gets high, said district transportation director Terry Palmer.

To track complaints, employees fill out a paper form outlining the problem. But Palmer said the department lacks the time and staff to log every one into the computer.

The paper sheets are stored, but Wilcox said the department has problems retrieving them. He said some parents have called the help desk numerous times only to learn it has no record, or a partial record, of their complaint history.

Michelle Allen, mother of Brooke Ingoldsby, said Sunday she complained at least three times about her daughter's bus service.

The first time was last year, when Brooke was dropped off early at her stop and left alone before her family arrived to greet her. The last time occurred four days before her death, when Brooke was dropped off 45 minutes late. In both cases, the family said, the transportation department failed to address the problem.

Brooke was killed after a bus driver dropped her off an hour late on the wrong side of Dr. Martin Luther King Street N. in St. Petersburg, which led her to try to cross the five-lane road at rush hour. She was struck by a sport utility vehicle.

Her grandmother had been there earlier to greet her but left after nearly an hour to tell the girl's stepfather to call Brooke's school. The grandmother returned, only to see the accident scene.

Wilcox said Monday that the transportation department is still trying to find the complaints called in by Brooke's family.

Palmer told the School Board it sometimes takes the help desk four or five days to get back to a parent. "Do some (complaints) fall through the cracks on occasion? Yes," he said. "I'm not going to kid you."

Other continuing problems also surfaced, even as the School Board discussed improving the system.

Wilcox said 20 percent of the phone numbers the district has on file for students are incorrect, primarily because families don't update their schools when they move.

The superintendent also said the routing software that played a role in Brooke Ingoldsby's death is outdated. He said the same is true for the $2-million Global Positioning System being installed in the bus system for next school year, allowing the district to keep better tabs on students and buses.

"We're touting it as new technology," Wilcox said. "But every damn taxicab in America has used it for the last 15 years."

The three transportation companies he plans to consult are Laidlaw Education Services, which bills itself as the largest student transportation contractor in North America; Durham School Services of Austin, Texas; and Management Partnership Services of Pennsylvania.

McKinney's mother, Sally, and sister, Mary, 17, watched Monday as the School Board heard details of Wilcox's reorganization plan. They were accompanied by one of their attorneys, Theresa L. Fiset.

"This isn't an operational, day-to-day thing that needs to be addressed sometime in the future; it's an emergency that needs to be addressed immediately," Fiset said. "I expected heads to be rolling. I expected Mr. Palmer's job to be gone. I expected things to be done other than suggestions for possibly adding four new employees to the bureaucracy."

Wilcox responded, saying the district is moving much faster than it normally does to make the changes. He noted he recommended suspensions for eight transportation coordinators and the firing of a routing supervisor. Another top employee resigned rather than be fired.

He urged both families to talk with the district directly about compensation, rather than using the courts. "We certainly understand that we have liability," he said. "We've admitted as much and we're certainly going to do the right thing by them."

The district will feel the effects of the two deaths for years, he said. "In all honesty, the greatest thing we can do for these families is to fix transportation so that this is a defining moment for this district."

[Last modified February 22, 2005, 05:11:19]