NAMPA, Idaho — This article originally appeared in the Idaho Press.
In past years, afternoons at the Brown Bus Company vehicle lot would have been characterized by drivers in action, preparing for their after-school routes. But this September, the lot remains still.
“Typically during the school year, things are just boom, boom, boom,” Operations Manager Brent Carpenter said.
Carpenter has officially worked for Brown Bus since the 1990s, but this serves more as a technicality. Carpenter’s family began the business in 1959 with the Nampa School District as their first client.
For the first time in 64 years, Brown Bus is not driving Nampa School District students after the company’s contract was not renewed. With this loss, Brown Bus has lost 80 routes normally covered by 100 buses. This has resulted in employees going to First Student — the busing company the district is now partnering with instead of Brown Bus — and additional layoffs.
“That is probably one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do in a business scenario,” Carpenter said. “Because at that point, you’re messing with people’s lives.”
Brown Bus’ community roots are apparent. Plaques and certificates paper the wall at the entrance of the Brown Bus administrative office. Each award thanks either Brown Bus or Carpenter specifically for supporting their nonprofit.
Last week, Carpenter sat at a conference room table in the Brown Bus administrative office with a stack of papers in front of him. A Boys & Girls Club tumbler, where Carpenter serves on the board of directors, was in his hand.
While Carpenter said he has moved past the loss of the bus contract, he felt his side of the story conflicted with statements from the NSD.
“I don’t necessarily have an ax to grind, but one of the things that is a frustration through this process is the inaccurate narrative that the district is pushing,” Carpenter said.
School buses have been the source of exasperation for families in the Nampa School District since the first day of school on Aug. 19. Families have had issues with bus delays and lost children as recently as the second week of school. Multiple parents reported that their child was dropped off at the wrong stop.
First Student, Nampa’s new bus contractor, redirected requests for comment to NSD spokesperson Matt Sizemore.
“As our drivers continue to familiarize themselves with their routes and students, we expect our transportation system to become more and more efficient,” Sizemore wrote in an email. “However, we recognize that we are not yet where we want to be. Every day, our transportation team reassess the previous day’s performance, identifying potential problems and making small but impactful adjustments.”
During a June 11 vote, the school district’s board of trustees cited a lack of clear information in Brown Bus’ forms as their reason for not accepting their bid. The board labeled the bid as noncompliant because of empty sections and a failure to distinguish fixed costs.
Since then, First Student has taken the reins to get Nampa’s school buses up and running within weeks. The district has attributed the recent busing failures to this tight timeline and, in part, to Brown Bus.
“(The district and First Student) haven’t had the normal amount of time that a thing like this would take,” Sizemore said in an Aug. 20 interview with the Idaho Press. “We are with a new bus company now, First Student, because of the situation that Brown Bus had put us in very late into the game.”
TWO SIDES, TWO STORIES
Brown Bus’ contract was up for renewal with expectations to draft another five-year contract. Brown Bus and the NSD began preliminary discussions in December 2023.
It was at this December meeting that Superintendent Gregg Russell said Brown Bus predicted a 10-14% cost increase for the new contract. Because of this estimation, Russell said the district was surprised to receive an offer in the spring with a 21-24% increase.
However, Carpenter said that they estimated a 15-18% increase in December discussions. Carpenter described the meeting as a casual conversation, as it was difficult to set a precise cost with many unknowns.
Several district decisions made in the spring impacted busing, including new boundaries following school closures, implementing trimesters and moving to a four-day week.
“If you start from December to June, with all the changes that they made, most districts maybe make one or two of those in an entire year,” Carpenter said.
When the NSD said the spring offer of a 24.5% increase was too high, Carpenter countered with 21%. Rather than coming to an agreement, the NSD stood strong in keeping a budget of $8 million max.
“That took them by surprise, and I understand that, I understand the frustration,” Carpenter said about the 24.5% increase. “I’m not discounting their frustration from the conversation in December to receiving that.”
Carpenter said the company’s costs are decided based on the consumer price index. When the NSD said the transportation budget would be tight, Carpenter prepared to possibly make cuts, but the district did not want to remove routes.
During this time, Carpenter said conversations with the district became contentious. Carpenter recalled a call where Russell allegedly said, “I may or may not be the superintendent (in the future), but if I am, I’m going to make sure that Brown Bus is at the bottom of the list for consideration.”
Sizemore said that statement was taken out of context. He said Russell’s actual comment was closer to: “If I get forced into a 9.5 million dollar contract, which is $1.5 million over budget, and we are forced to cut more from schools, then when the contract expires, I would recommend Brown Bus being on the bottom of the list.”
GOING TO BID
Discontented with the offers from Brown Bus, a decision was made in April to open the contract for outside bids.
“They shifted gears really quick, and again, we did not stop the negotiations, they did,” Carpenter said. “We’re long-standing contractors. We had people that I wanted to continue to employ.”
Carpenter said the bidding process went very quickly. Following the bid submission deadline on June 10, the board made a decision on June 11.
“If you’re going to award a $40 million contract, you’re probably not making that decision in just over 24 hours,” Carpenter said, referring to First Student’s five-year contract.
He also believes the creation of the proposal form was rushed and that some items were unclear.
Sizemore countered that the time it took shouldn’t be the main consideration, but the process behind it.
“We obtained the request for proposal form from another school district in Idaho, which is a common practice,” Sizemore wrote. “Like other districts, we often use request for proposal forms that have already been vetted and adapt them to fit our district’s specific needs.”
Leading up to the bid deadline, Carpenter said he offered to go over Brown Bus’ bid with NSD Director of Operations Courtney Stauffer, but Stauffer declined.
When the board looked over the bids, Brown Bus’ bid was deemed noncompliant.
As required by Idaho code, school districts must accept the lowest-cost bid unless it is found to be noncompliant. First Student’s bid was for $7.1 million and, based on Carpenter’s clarifications, Brown Bus’ bid would have been $6.8 million.
At the same time, Carpenter noted that the district can waive “irregularities” to define a bid as compliant — an exception that could have applied to Brown Bus’ bid.
Instead of noncompliance being the issue, Carpenter believes that the NSD never intended to give Brown Bus a fair shot.
The district’s legal counsel has previously said that such irregularities must be minor to waive. In this case, issues in the bid were not considered small by the district.
A FRACTURED RELATIONSHIP
Since then, Carpenter has taken issue with the district stating that the First Student contract is saving money.
Comparing the June 11 bids, the total Brown Bus bid is approximately $325,000 less annually than the First Student bid. This doesn’t account for other costs such as the district establishing a transportation center for First Student.
“I believe they are spinning this because of the situation,” Carpenter said. “They’re trying to make the situation look better from their position.”
Carpenter described negotiations that became tense as the district and Brown Bus failed to meet in the middle, with the NSD being unwilling to consider a number above $8 million.
On the other hand, Sizemore questioned whether it could be called “negotiating” when things were at a standstill. Sizemore also questioned how Brown Bus was able to bring its bid down to $6.7 million, when the company previously said it would have to make major cuts to reach $8 million.
“I’m not really even sure it can be called a negotiation when the only options that were considered by Brown Bus would have put the district in a huge financial hole,” Sizemore wrote in an email. “However, as you can imagine, it certainly put the district in a hard spot which forced the district to go out to bid and ultimately led us to where we are now.”
Carpenter said he regrets confusing the relationship with the NSD as something greater than a business transaction.
“I’ve worked with the Nampa School District and the people at the district for so long that I allowed that business relationship to be more than — in my mind — a business relationship,” Carpenter said. “And it wasn’t.”
This article originally appeared in the Idaho Press, read more on IdahoPress.com.
