MONROE COUNTY, Tenn. — For half a century, Cooley Bus Service has taken Monroe County students to and from school. They're not sure what to do this year.
"We have been loyal to this county for 50 years. We have worked and worked and worked and worked," said Scott Harold, who helps his wife's family run the business. "We just feel like we have just been shut down and nobody wants to listen to us."
He had hoped their longstanding loyalty to Monroe County Schools would pay off in negotiations this summer. However, he and a number of other contractors were disappointed by the district's offer.
"We're not making nothing," said James Miles, who typically runs three routes for the district. "Our contractors have not had a raise in over 20 years."
Miles said the new contract would be for 2 years instead of 4 years, making it difficult to secure any loans.
The old contract included a $400 monthly stipend per bus and roughly $1.38 per seat per bus per day.
The new contract would remove that stipend in exchange for increasing that per-seat pay to $1.71.
"Moving [the stipend] pay over to seat pay is an insult to us," Miles said. "In 8 years that me and my wife have been doing this, we just haven't seen any appreciation."
Miles said the new contract would increase monthly pay per bus by $16 to $120 if it has 72 or more seats.
However, he said the pay for a 66-passenger bus would decrease by about $20 a month. A 25-passenger bus would earn about $255 less under the new contract.
"We need to be more compensated for what we do," he said. "We've got about a 30% to 35% increase in our parts, labor, tires, anything we purchase ... we're not signing this contract."
Other contractors are debating whether it's financially possible to continue running their buses too.
"We have a floating fuel scale, but it really doesn't keep up with what our fuel costs," Larry McCall of McCall Transit said. "It's a really a tight business."
They told 10News they love their kids and driving them to school, but these contracts aren't enough to make ends meet.
"We're taking a hit here," Harold said. "It's putting us out of business."
Director of Monroe County Schools Kristi Windsor told 10News that the district and the contractors met on three different occasions about the contract negotiations during the spring months of 2022.
According to Windsor, multiple versions of contracts were drafted and discussed during the negotiations and feedback was taken from contractors and drivers each time the committee met.
"From those meetings, several items were deleted/added to accommodate any of the contractors/drivers requests that the district felt were reasonable, feasible, and fair to both sides," Windsor said.
Windsor said that in previous years, under previous contracts, the district was forced to pay seat rates on routes that were being doubled, which provided compensation for buses that were not running.
Under the most previous contract, payment was issued from March until May of 2020, even though buses were not running during the pandemic. In 2021, when buses only ran four days per week, contractors were still compensated with their full pay and no loss of money for the one day per week they did not run buses, according to Windsor.
Windsor ended her statement by defending the district's decision:
"The main purpose of the district in the most recent contract negotiations was to ensure that we are being provided the services that our transportation dollars are being spent toward and that we are able to have more oversight over how bus services are provided. The district has every intention of using transportation funds to pay contractors for services rendered, however, it is not in the best interest of our students or our communities to continue to pay for services that we have not received. The new contract includes a 3% raise that will begin with the 2023-24 school year, continuing every year thereafter for as long as the contract is in place. The new contract also requires a bus and a driver for a contractor to be awarded a route, all in an attempt to ensure that routes are only awarded to those who intend to provide bus service every day that school is in session. Students, parents, and school employees have continuously been forced to accommodate routes not run, buses that are parked, and daily, often last-minute, changes to pick up and drop off times in certain areas. Under the terms of the new contract, the district will have more control of what type of accommodations are made if a driver or a bus is not available, and this will be something that will be handled on a case-by-case basis under emergency situations only, not for extended or indefinite periods of time.
Never has the intent of the Monroe School District been to discontinue bus service, and that is not the desire of the district at this time. Routes are being advertised for bid, and those in the district are hopeful that current and new contractors will take advantage of the opportunity to pick up one or more routes for the 2022-23 school year."