ATHABASCA — What happens if the wheels on the bus stop going ‘round and ‘round?
That is the question being asked by small independent school bus companies across the province as insurance has spiked 350 per cent over the last two years creating a dire need for government intervention.
“The insurance is the pressing issue, but this goes back a little further with regards to the fuel funding being eliminated by the provincial government a few years back, the MELT (Mandatory Entry Level Training) program that was brought in with very little thought to how that would impact school busing and shortage of school bus drivers that we face throughout the province,” said Mark Critch at an Aspen View Public Schools emergency board meeting Nov. 8. “And unfortunately, a lot of times school busing is an afterthought when these things are done.”
Critch is the president of Sparksman Transportation and also the president of the Alberta School Bus Contractors’ Association (ASBCA) representing school bus contractors of all sizes and he explained the history of how small contractors like locally-owned YC Charter saw insurance costs jump from $19,000 in 2019 to almost $90,000 this year.
“We've been pushing the Alberta government, the education minister, as well as the Treasury to come up with some sort of funding to help offset this or to have a meeting to discuss how we're going to go forward in the new year which would have been Nov. 1, 2021,” he said. “We were ignored for a long time.”
Historically, AVPS gets the insurance, and the busing companies can pay it to the division either in a lump sum or in up to six equal payments, but the insurance companies tried to get around that this time and deal directly with the companies, resulting in a delay before falling back to the established method, he told trustees.
“The groups that were out there offering insurance ... didn't want to offer insurance to small contractors anymore,” said Critch. “They didn't want to go through the school boards anymore to do it that way. They wanted to deal directly with bus companies, and they didn't want to deal with small contractors.”
Unfortunately, the story has disappeared from the major news networks, Critch said, and parents and guardians are unaware of how serious the situation is and will continue to be.
“(On Oct. 28) before they were to lose their coverage on (Nov. 1), they still had no insurance in place, which was kind of scary, and at that point, we were thinking 15,000 to 20,000 students wouldn't get to school on Monday,” he said. “So, the good and the bad — the good was the news picked us up and they ran with it because this was a big story now; the bad part was it really didn't talk about the other issues that we were facing and what the cost of the insurance was going to be.”
And then Alberta Minister of Finance Travis Toews announced Oct. 29 the issue had been dealt with, so it sank to the bottom of the news cycle.
“So, to be perfectly honest, the media is not really interested in making a big story out of it anymore because it's not really that exciting," Critch said. “It's exciting to say 15,000 kids aren't getting to school on Monday. Now we don't have that story anymore so, we're running out of ideas to really get the media coverage we need to try to get this help.”
For Yvonne Cumbleton, owner of YC Charter, it does not matter if Aspen View pays the insurance up front and bills her — $90,000 is still $90,000, no matter how many slices you cut it into to.
“We were supposed to sign a paper (with AVPS) saying what option we wanted,” said Cumbleton Nov. 10. “We didn't know how much insurance was and we did not know the interest rate.”
AVPS clarified the document may say there could be interest, but they have never charged any.
“Procedurally, there is a mechanism within the agreement with contractors to charge interest on payment installments, should circumstances warrant,” AVPS communications officer Ross Hunter said in a Nov. 10 e-mail. “However, to date Aspen View has never charged interest on payment installments, nor do we plan to do so.”
Trustees voted last year to help, one time, when insurance jumped to $4,500 per bus, but cannot continue to subsidize it so, chose to bring it up during their conventions this week and asked Critch what they could do, but it still comes back to money, he said.
“We've been asked that question quite often and my answer is always the same; as many voices as possible speaking on this,” he said. “And then, of course, the other answer always goes back to money. You can really have a look and see what you can do from a budget standpoint to help your small contractors to offset some of this because I don't feel they're going to be able to survive if you don't.”
Cumbleton, however, is unsure what trustees can accomplish during the Alberta School Boards Association (ASBA) and Public School Boards’ Association (PSBA) conventions which started Nov. 14 when trustees will have face time with ministers and MLAs and she was disappointed there was no monetary discussion at the emergency meeting.
“We have a publicist company that's been lobbying for months and haven't got an answer from the government, yet they think they can in one meeting,” she said. “So, we're just gonna keep going on for three weeks and then give our 90-days notice?”
