Brick's Plan To Lay Off 24 Bus Drivers Headed To Civil Service Commission

The Brick Township School District will submit its plans to reduce its full-time staff of bus drivers by 24 positions to the state Tuesday, but board members and the superintendent vowed to keep examining the issue in the days and weeks ahead.

The board took public comment, primarily from bus drivers but also from some parents, for more than three hours in a special Board of Education meeting convened at Veterans Memorial Middle School, where the board will meet this summer while renovation of the electrical systems at Brick Township High School is completed.

And much like the May 28 meeting when the board voted to delay submission of the layoff plan to the state Civil Service Commission, much of that comment centered on information -- or what many said was misinformation -- the board was given.

“There’s a sense of frustration with information that’s constantly changing that we’re getting as board members,” Board President Sharon Cantillo said. “We don’t know what information we can rely on.”

She also said at several points during the meeting that the board was not looking to take away people’s jobs, saying that statements from Transportation Manager Joseph Sangiovanni claiming the layoffs originated with the board were simply not true.

Interim Superintendent Richard Caldes said he and business administrator James Edwards have been re-examining the information they have been working with in detail, and found that due to impending retirements and vacancies that they could reduce the anticipated layoffs from 31 to 24 positions.

But Caldes noted the work has just begun, and that he uncovers information he didn’t know every day.

“Every night I come home and tell my wife, ‘You’re not going to believe what I found out today,’ “ he said.

“There’s a lot of changes that have to be made,” Caldes said. ”We’ve got to come up with a better way. ... This is a complicated issue that’s been building for years. You’re not going to resolve everything in one night.”

Caldes also said scrapping the layoffs -- after the board had approved the budget including the cuts -- would subject the district to scrutiny at the county and state levels.

“If we bring back all of the drivers we have to justify why we’re bringing them back,” he said. That’s something he said he was not able to do at this point, but said that didn’t mean it wasn’t possible down the line, noting that a plan to lay off paraprofessionals a few years back that resulted in similar protests at board meetings resulted in just five people losing their jobs.

Board members Susan Suter, John Barton and Frank Pannucci all questioned whether the district had to submit the layoff plan to the Civil Service Commission now, but Edwards and Caldes said failing to do so would put the district in financial jeopardy as well as invite the possibility of state oversight.

“I have to be able to certify each month that we have enough money to pay our bills,” Edwards said. Delaying the process further -- Edwards said the plan should have been submitted May 1, the day after the board approved the 2015-16 budget -- puts him in a position of not being able to say that.

Barton and Pannucci pressed the issue at the end of the board meeting, pushing forward a motion to delay sending the plan to civil service until the executive county superintendent appoints someone to fill the seat vacated by John Talty, even as Edwards, Caldes and board attorney Jack Sahradnik told them submitting the plan was necessary from a legal standpoint. Edwards explained repeatedly that doing so would put the district at risk for state monitoring.

It wasn’t until Cantillo, clearly frustrated, turned to Edwards and said, “Why don’t we just vote to request a state monitor right now?” that Barton stepped back and withdrew the motion.

Head bus drivers from several schools spoke and implored Caldes and the board to look at every aspect of the plan, which they said will result in worse problems in getting students to and from school than have existed this school year -- where parent complaints about buses picking up children late or sometimes not at all have plagued the district.

“I have been driving my daughter since January,” said one mother, who estimated her daughter had missed eight days’ worth of school because her bus had gotten her to school late on so many occasions.

Driver Karen Provinzano said the cuts will compromise student safety. As it is, she said, there are times when drivers are thrown into cover runs where they don’t know the students. For kindergartners and first-graders, who have to be delivered to a parent, it’s a dangerous situation, she said.

“You have to rely on these children to tell you whether the person meeting them is the right person,” she said. “(Saving) $1.2 million is not worth one child getting lost.”

Talty, who was in attendance, told the board and audience that he is opposed to privatization, saying that what has happened is money is saved the first year, but in the end privatization ends up being more expensive.

Talty also rejected Sangiovanni’s statements that the board insisted on cutting drivers’ jobs.

“Categorically that is not true,” Talty said.

Caldes said the solutions to the situation will require everyone -- the union and the district -- to work together. That includes during the current contract negotiations, where he said some of the issues -- including pay for substitutes -- will have to be addressed. Right now the district pays substitute bus drivers less than $15 per hour, an amount set out in the contract, and as a result the district has an inadequate substitute pool.

Gregory Cohen, the local representative for the Transport Workers Union, said the fact that the district has hired part-time drivers -- who he said are not held to the same work requirements as drivers who are covered under the contract and who he said take days off without facing consequences -- has complicated that fact, because the part-timers are paid $17 per hour.

Cohen also brought up the claims of Sangiovanni, who told the Patch in a lengthy interview that the layoff plan resulted from the insistence of former board member Larry Reid that 20 positions and all the cover runs could be cut to address absenteeism.

Cantillo said that was not true. She asked Edwards -- though it took a few moments as she avoided saying Sangiovanni’s name -- what Sangiovanni’s response was to the question, ”Can you run your transportation department without the 20 covers.”

“He said yes,” Edwards said.

“We were not looking to take away jobs,” Cantillo said.

Talty told the board and audience that he is opposed to privatization, saying that what has happened is money is saved the first year, but in the end privatization ends up being more expensive.

Talty also rejected Sangiovanni’s statements that the board insisted on cutting drivers’ jobs.

“Categorically that is not true,” Talty said.

TWU President John Menshon expressed frustration that the board began contract negotiations knowing the budget it was passing included the plan to lay off drivers but failed to tell the union of that plan, saying the board was negotiating in bad faith by doing so.

That resulted in a unanimous no-confidence vote in the board at a recent meeting of the union, Menshon said.

The Civil Service Commission will have 30 days to act on Brick’s plan, and the district will have 45 days after the commission acts to finalize layoffs, Sahradnik said.

In the meantime, Edwards said, he will be presenting information to the board on cuts that have to be made in other areas to fund the seven jobs already cut from the layoff plan.