You hit a hot point with me on this one.
My wife didnt understand at first, but outsourcing of school bus service is the #1 reason why I have her drop our son off at school herself. Durham and First Student are always running ads around here looking for drivers, "training provided". They pay crap which leads to high turnover, and their training is 12 weeks to get someone a CDL. Sysco won't let someone drive a box of chicken tenders around with less than 2 yrs experience...why would I be ok with a new CDL holder with 3 months training driving my kid around? They don't maintain their vehicles either, every summer just before the school year starts at least one of the news stations in town does a story at a bus yard with a state trooper talking about how many vehicle OOS notices were issued in the pre-school year inspections they do. The purpose of the story is to make people feel better because it looks like the state's on top of it, but to me it illustrates just how poorly they maintain their fleet. They know about the inspections this time of year and still have problems, what kind of shape do you think those brakes and tires etc. are in the rest of the year?
Understand I'm FAR from being overprotective in every other aspect of my kids' lives, but I'm not putting them on one of those buses. When the school districts owned the buses and employed the drivers they had an incentive to be safe because they didn't want the bad press and lawsuits. Now if there's an accident they don't even issue a statement because they don't own the buses or employ the drivers. It's Durham's issue to deal with.
Whatever savings they realize sure don't keep my damn property taxes from going up every year either...