Earlier this month, the School Committee voted unanimously—but a little reluctantly—to approve a three-year contract with Dee Bus Service of Westford for both regular daily transportation to and from school and after-school transportation for students taking part in athletic events.
Dee was again the only bidder for the contract, as it had been in 2016. School administrators had hoped for some competitive bids this time around, perhaps resulting in lower prices. Business Manager Aziz Aghayev said Durham School Services, a national company, had expressed strong interest in the busing contract but then failed to submit a bid.
Dee set $492,660 as the cost for regular daily busing for fiscal 2020, a 4.2% increase over fiscal 2019. Over the life of the contract, that cost rises to $522,900 for fiscal 2022. The cost to the district, however, will be slightly less than those amounts because, as Superintendent Linda Dwight pointed out, those prices include the cost of the bus that serves students from Devens, for which Harvard is reimbursed by MassDevelopment.
While the year-to-year increases for daily busing are comparatively moderate, Dee’s price for athletic transportation rose dramatically, Dwight said. For those after-school trips, Dee charges both hourly costs for drivers and mileage rates. The hourly cost is jumping from $65 per hour last year to $80 next year—a 23% increase—and will be $90 by fiscal 2022. Ironically, as Dwight noted, “The better our teams do, the more transportation they use.” The best hope for savings, Dwight said, comes from using the school’s three vans for as much of the athletic transportation as possible. The limit there, however, is drivers; each team has only one coach, who also serves as the driver.
School Committee members briefly discussed other options, such as seeking another bid on the athletic transportation alone or seeing if Dee would offer a lower bid in exchange for a longer contract. But both Aghayev and Dwight said it was unlikely that any company would bid on the athletic contract alone, while Dee might even raise its current bid if the process was reopened. And Aghayev said the other school where he works fared badly with a five-year contract. So, still hoping for some competition in bids three years from now, committee members unanimously approved the Dee contract at their June 10 meeting.
