NSTA Board Meets in Nation's Capitol

Bill Paul | Publisher

WASHINGTON, DC — “We got our 50th sponsor today,” said Terry Thomas, a past president of the National School Transportation Association, just minutes before the association opened its quarterly Board of Directors meeting in May. The NSTA was in town for its annual trek to personally visit Senators and Representatives in the U.S. Congress on issues of interest to the school bus industry.

With 50 sponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Jimmy Duncan (D-TN) can now move a resolution to a floor vote formally recognizing the third week of October as National School Bus Safety Week. Since Duncan first agreed nearly six months ago to introduce the proposal, if the industry could help line up 50 co-sponsors, NSTA and its members have led the effort to convince their individual congressmen to support Duncan’s proposal (within the following week, at least seven more co-sponsors signed on).

Working through the NSTA’s Washington DC-based lobbying firm, BKSH & Associates, contractors are increasingly seeking to influence key legislators and staff on matters of interest to the school bus industry.

Incoming president Barry Stock cited a joint letter signed by the presidents of the three school bus associations to several congressional leaders last week as an example of the growing influence of the school bus association coalition’s influence. The letter quickly found its way into a press release issued by Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. In his press release Boehner quoted extensively from the letter, and challenged House Democrats to support the measure.

The joint letter also urged Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to approve H.R. 5254 and H.R. 5253. The former would increase the availability of reasonably priced fuel by streamlining the permitting process for new or expanded refineries. The second measure would ensure that the federal government has the authority to investigate price gouging by fuel suppliers. “Our industry is struggling with staggeringly high fuel costs that are threatening our ability to provide low-cost safe transportation for 25 million school children each day,” according to the three presidents.

Finally, the letter urged prompt congressional action on H.R. 4158, the School Energy Crisis Relief Act. This proposed law authorizes the Secretary of Energy to issue grants to financially strapped school districts whose energy costs have outstripped their budgets. The grants would be available for any energy funding shortfalls districts experience, not only transportation.

The school bus coalition is not limiting itself to legislation and regulations. “We’ve also finalized the agreement with the Highway Watch of the American Trucking Associations for the School Bus Watch program,” said incoming president Barry Stock. He said the industry will be paid $3 for each school bus driver trained in the security awareness program. Revenues will cover NASDPTS expenses to administer the School Bus Watch program with any remaining funds to be divided equally among the three industry associations. These announcements were an encouraging start to the two-day gathering.

Stock was filling in for NSTA President John Corr who was in a day-long negotiated rulemaking meeting with the Federal Transit Administration. The advisory committee of the Coalition of Private Transportation Associations is comprised of 17 members, including NSTA, representing diverse interests in private sector transportation. The objective of the coalition is to negotiate an agreement between the Federal Transit Administration and private sector operators to protect private sector transporters from being swallowed up by federally funded public mass transit.

Before moving up onto Capitol Hill the NSTA Board conducted a typical business meeting. Committee reports are an integral part of any board meeting and are typically quite mundane unless one’s survival is at stake. School bus icon survival wasn’t an issue here, at least not directly. However, contractors expressed apprehension about the less-than-favorable public image of yellow school buses that seems to permeate general press reporting about the industry. They acknowledged it as a “serious threat.”
School bus contractors believe the yellow bus as the icon representing pupil transportation has been tarnished in recent years due to oceans of negative publicity.

n addition to daily headlines about yet another “school bus accident” or other untoward behavior at school bus stops, the negative publicity stems from several developments and events of recent vintage, and the high profile given to these events by means of modern telecommunication—primarily television and the Internet. For example, the so-called “scientific” reports about the purported dangers of diesel emissions to young children that portray school buses as a dangerous environment. Scuffles, fights and other bad behavior on school buses are recorded by video cameras intended to improve discipline, but quickly move into the public domain and receive broad distribution on the evening news broadcasts. Internet search engines daily turn up scores of school bus headlines, often reporting the worst in aberrant behavior by students, drivers and the public alike. “It is an appalling picture,” said one contractor.

Countering these perceptions will not be easy, or inexpensive. “We want to brand the yellow bus icon,” said Thomas. “We need some core impressions to associate with that identity, and a clear set of impressions due to the threat to the yellow bus icon.”

Contractors agreed the public relations campaign was intended to influence mothers, state and federal legislators, and school boards and educational administrators.

Thomas noted that NSTA’s lobbyists have urged contractors to work with other segments of the pupil transportation industry to develop a clear message of what the school bus industry is about, in order to present a unified message when lobbying for federal regulatory or legislative initiatives. The NSTA is examining the possibility of joining with NAPT and NASDPTS under the 3N / 3P process to develop a broadly based public relations campaign to address the issue. No action was taken and, at this writing, the issue remained on the table.

With fuel prices on the increase nationwide the Board soon turned to discussing energy developments in Congress. Contractors approved a proposal to provide grant funding for schools to cover the increasing cost of energy. They also examined a proposed Missouri wiretap law that would govern both audio and video recordings, the status of energy legislation pending before Congress, and federal appropriations for the clean diesel emission reduction and Clean School Bus programs. “Some grant money has started to trickle out,” said Gabe Rozsa of BSKH Associates. “The Administration went from a $12 million request up to $49.5 million request (for diesel emission reduction) due to industry pressure.”

Other “big picture” issues the NSTA board considered were funding for the EPA’s clean school bus grants, state wiretap laws and school bus surveillance by video cams on board school buses, how to jump-start the school bus industry’s Security Task Force, the status of several legislative issues currently before Congress, and the so called “65%” proposal.

This grass roots initiative by the First Class Education group would mandate that 65 percent of all K-12 education funding be directed into the classroom. All support services, including transportation, would be subject to arbitrary reductions to free up funds.

Stock noted that classroom funding varies by state, ranging from 45 percent to 68 percent. “If the status in your state currently is 48 percent and next year it is mandated to be 65 percent, that will be a problem,” he said.

The First Class initiative is promoting more efficient use of funding. One of its major principles is that support services should be outsourced. “So they are proponents of privatizing school support services,” said Robin Leeds, NSTA’s industry specialist. She urged caution when examining the impact of the proposal to school districts.
NSTA has an invitation to present on the potential impact to transportation of the 65 percent proposal at the National School Boards conference in 2007. Transportation generally consumes 5-to-8 percent of education funding. The board urged its members to become familiar with the proposal in their states.

Insurance, Tires and Recruitment
Board members approved a proposal by the Keystone Insurance Group to provide a group insurance plan for NSTA member companies covering general and fleet liability and workers comp insurance. The program does not include health insurance.

The NSTA’s executive committee interviewed four insurers before making its selection. “Keystone was the only one of the four that actually has a plan to present to us; the others said they would develop a program,” said Dale Krapf of Krapf Coaches.

He said that Keystone currently provides group insurance to about half of the 400 members of the Pennsylvania School Bus Association. The Keystone program will be available to member companies through a network of insurance agencies nationwide.
Contractors approved a tire purchasing agreement with Michelin whereby NSTA members can buy tires from Michelin at a deeper discount than is generally available locally. Bob Pudlewski of Laidlaw was directed to explore similar programs with other tire manufacturers.

The board also approved a six-month trial contract with MGI to develop and administer a membership recruitment and retention campaign. MGI believes it can recruit 55 new member companies in year one.

NSTA currently has 171 member companies in the association representing 80,000 yellow school buses. “In the mid 1980s before all the consolidations took place we had 800 (member companies),” said Krapf. The NSTA estimates a universe of 3,000 school bus contractors currently exists nationwide. Thirteen contractors, nine suppliers and eight public members joined the association since the July 2005 annual conference last summer.

Source: School Transportation News, July 2006. All rights reserved.