Seattle Schools and Transportation Contract - I Smell a Rat

Update: a good op-ed in Seattle's Child by Mary Ellen Russell, the chair of the City of Seattle School Traffic Safety Committee and a parent of two students in Seattle Public Schools.

As appalling as these violations are, this is by no means the first time that First Student has been found putting students at risk. In 2016, First Student paid an $11.5 million settlement in response to a lawsuit that alleged that the company “jeopardized the lives of San Francisco area schoolchildren by transporting them with buses known to have critical safety defects such as threadbare brakes and worn tires.” Worse, “according to First Student’s own records, the company committed more than 300 violations of the district’s 45-day inspection requirement over a nine-month period. Many of these violations concerned critical safety defects that should have resulted in removing the bus from service.” 

In addition to putting students at risk, First Student is a poor district partner, with a long record of misleading the school districts they contract with. The UTC’s report found three instances of First Student “making, or causing to make fraudulent or intentionally false statements, fraudulent or intentionally false entries on records, or reproducing records for fraudulent purposes.” 

Nor is First Student’s penchant for fraudulent statements limited to its contract bus services in Washington. San Francisco Unified School District is currently suing First Student, claiming that First Student’s invoices repeatedly contained false statements or misrepresentations, and that First Student invoiced the district for thousands of student trips that it never provided.

Ms. Russell queried parents about their experiences.

The most common stories, 19 in all, were of students being dropped far from home, put on the wrong bus, or lost while in First Student’s care.

As frightening as each of these incidents is, it is even more concerning that parents consistently reported that First Student’s response was to deny responsibility rather than taking action to ensure the incident would not be repeated.

This is the nightmare of every parent whose child uses district bus services.

She ends her piece with a strong throwdown to the Board and district (bold mine):

What all of these reports make clear is that First Student’s documented track record of safety violations is not limited to its charter business. The same pattern of sloppy oversight and failure to correct known issues is putting SPS students at risk of serious harm. 

Seattle Public Schools has proudly adopted a student outcomes-focused governance model, which says that all decision-making in the district should be guided by how those decisions affect students: “Changes in student outcomes are not possible without changes in adult behavior — and the Seattle School Board is committed to making changes to center outcomes for students in its governance.” If student outcomes are the district’s north star, then it cannot sign a new contract with a service provider who puts students at risk.

Please let the Board know your thoughts - spsdirectors@seattleschools.org (only directors) or schoolboard@seattleschools.org (directors, Superintendent and senior staff).

end of update

In a finely-detailed story, My Northwest lays out the issues around the RFP for bus transportation for Seattle Schools' students. Zum, the competitor to First Student, says the district has made scoring mistakes on their RFP all along the process.

With Seattle Public Schools potentially days away from confirming First Student with a three-year contract as the district’s primary school bus provider, their competition has accused the district of “arbitrarily and improperly” awarding the contract to First Student. 

The only other company vying for the contract, Zum Services — a California-based transportation startup worth $930 million — holds similar contracts in San Francisco and Oakland. 

Kim Raney, Executive Director of Transportation and Logistics at Oakland Unified School District, described the services they provide as analogous to rideshares in that the company offers real-time status updates to passengers: “They’re basically the Uber of school buses,” Raney told MyNorthwest.

Here's what Zum says:

Zum alleges, according to the company’s attorney Daniel Suvor, that Seattle Public Schools made a series of accounting mistakes as they evaluated proposals submitted by both First Student and Zum. Suvor offers the idea that the district “failed to differentiate between [types of buses] required for service of the contract, and were offered by both vendors at different prices.” That culminated in the district miscalculating Zum’s final offer bid price, according to Suvor. 

The scoring metric that Seattle Public Schools used to evaluate the two companies lists five criteria: qualifications and experience, vendor approach, references, required staff, and willingness to accept terms and conditions. First Student ultimately edged out Zum by five points along that scale, according to the latest bid-score sheet, obtained by MyNorthwest. 

That scoring represents the culmination of a series of bids dating back to Oct. 28 of 2021 when SPS released its initial request. Both companies submitted their best and final offers by February. The district awarded the contract to First Student, at which point Zum filed their first protest, alleging that the district simply did not factor in their final bid into their analysis, instead using a dated offer.

As well,

Zum contends that they provide cheaper wheelchair accessible buses than First Student, and had that been considered in their score with the district, they would rate higher in SPS’ evaluation as their proposal would factor out to approximately $7 million cheaper, according to a spokesperson with Zum.

Mary Ellen Russell, Chair of the City of Seattle School Traffic Safety Committee and former Seattle Schools PTA member, echoed that allegation in an interview with MyNorthwest, saying, “wheelchair buses were excluded in the bid, which Zum Services has much cheaper wheelchair buses than First Student. This made First Student appear to be the cheaper option during the bidding process.” 

Mary Ellen Russell, Chair of the City of Seattle School Traffic Safety Committee and former Seattle Schools PTA member, echoed that allegation in an interview with MyNorthwest, saying, “wheelchair buses were excluded in the bid, which Zum Services has much cheaper wheelchair buses than First Student. This made First Student appear to be the cheaper option during the bidding process.”

Now why would SPS go with First Student which has not been a reliable source of transportation and...

Days later, The Washington Transportation Commission released their finding that First Student violated a number of safety regulations, 634 in total. The UTC would later settle with First Student to the tune of $198,000. 

“A significant portion [of the violations] were really related to random alcohol and controlled substance testing, not just conducting them but how the company was conducting them,” Emily Brown, with the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission, told MyNorthwest. 

Seattle Public Schools then withdrew their bid request, re-releasing a request for proposal in March after First Student had settled with the UTC. Zum contents that SPS did not provide a rationale for its decision to withdraw the request for proposal. 

First Student has contracted with SPS for more than 30 years, and past renewals of their contract, as recently as 2017, have gone uncontested.

So a company that has had a nearly sole contract for 30 YEARS finally has a competitive bidder against them and yet somehow, the district STILL decides to go with the company with all the safety violations. After that company cleared up those violations with a huge fine, the district then puts out another RFP.

That's where I smell a rat. It just doesn't make sense - if the bids were nearly the same, the district should go with a new vendor.

And SPS never fails to amuse:

Seattle Public Schools has signaled its interest in disclosing the details of how their rating of the two companies was determined “once the contract has been approved by the board,” Robinson wrote to MyNorthwest.

AFTER the Board passes the contract, THEN the district will reveal all. 

The SPS Board was previously scheduled to consider First Student’s nomination on May 4 but was delayed, and the agenda item has yet to be re-scheduled, according to Robinson. 

Individual members of the SPS board declined to comment on the RFP process and whether they had concerns about how the district conducted its selection of First Student.

I can understand the Board not wanting to say anything - this is very much an operations matter that falls to the Superintendent. However, safety should be a HUGE deal for the Board and First Student has not shown themselves to be effective in that area. 

As with the bell times, it's VERY late in the year to be finally getting this done. It's all deeply troubling.