Troubled school bus dept. on the mend
Aging maintenance garage upped inspection failure rate
BY PATRICIA A. MILLER Staff Writer
More than half of the Brick Township school district's 129 buses initially failed inspection earlier this year, according to state Motor Vehicle Commission (MVC) records.

Brick buses failed for a variety of reasons, ranging from minor items like a burned-out light bulb to problems with brakes and power steering.

"The school bus inspection checklist is very vigorous," said MVC spokeswoman Cathleen Lewis. "It does include simple things like an interior light bulb that's out. Your light could have worked yesterday, and this morning the bus driver turns it on and it doesn't."

Sixty-six buses out of the Brick fleet initially failed inspection during the last inspection in February, the MVC said.

The MVC issues one of two ratings when a school vehicle fails inspection - either a 30-day rejection sticker or an out-of-service violation.

But those numbers are still better than what Transportation Director Joseph Sangiovanni said he found when he took over the troubled transportation department in May 2007.

"When I first got there, I had a desk full of summonses," said Sangiovanni, who is also a township councilman.

An independent audit last year recommended that the district's transportation system be privatized because of the number of problems with the department.

"The people they had running it were people that came right out of the driving positions," Sangiovanni said. "They had no management background, no educational background. I'm not trying to bad-mouth anybody, but it was beyond their capabilities. They were doomed to fail before they even got started."

Last year's audit also noted that the "historical failure rate of bus inspections was unacceptable."

50-year-old maintenance garage

Part of that was due to the school district's aging bus maintenance building, which was built to handle 20 buses in the beginning, Sangiovanni said.

"What we don't have is an adequate facility," he said. "The building is probably 50-plus years old. Now we have to service buses through a three-bay garage. It's basically impossible to do what we do there."

What Brick needs is one central maintenance garage to handle vehicles from the township, school district and Municipal Utilities Authority, Sangiovanni said.

"I'm trying to convince both sides of the street that you need a mega-garage," he said. "This is an opportunity to put everything under one roof. We don't need three garages. If we had a facility that could accommodate all of that, there would be a tremendous amount of money to be saved."

A 30-day rejection sticker can often be easily remedied, but it does mean that the vehicle failed inspection initially, Lewis said.

"In some cases, the 30-day rejection sticker can be fixed in a matter of hours," she said. "You could have a light bulb out on the vehicle."

The MVC inspectors can get "picky," Sangiovanni said.

"If you have a scrape on the arm of the outer mirror, that's a write-up to them," he said. "We were getting written up for a lot of small stuff that could have been avoided if somebody was paying attention."

Sangiovanni said he is more concerned with the out-of-service violations, which sidelines vehicles until repairs can be made.

A vehicle that receives an out-of-service violation cannot transport passengers until the repairs have been completed and it has gone through inspection again, Lewis said.

"That's done if there are major problems that would impact the safety of the passengers," she said.

Prepping for inspections

Sangiovanni has since instituted "preinspection" inspections, done before the state MVC inspectors come in.

"We have drivers that sit in the yard, as they bring the buses up, they do preinspection inspections," he said.

As soon as a problem is found, the bus shop manager is notified," he said. "That's to make sure that everything that is written up is dealt with."

The MVC does roughly 78,000 school bus inspections each year. Of that number, roughly 40 percent receive out-of-service stickers and roughly 30 percent are issued 30-day inspection stickers, Lewis said.

"Ninety-one percent of reinspected vehicles are deemed safe for the road," she said.

The MVC requires school bus drivers to submit daily school bus condition reports at the beginning of each day.

Drivers must check for a myriad of items, including the mirror system, service brakes, parking brakes, gauges and warning devices, steering mechanism, lights, emergency exits, windows, exhaust system and any visible damage, according to the MVC Web site.

"From what I can see, it was a little bit lax when I got there," Sangiovanni said. "Now we do it and we do it consistently."

Sangiovanni said he does walkthroughs on buses occasionally.

Last year's audit also faulted the transportation department for an inadequate fleet replacement program and said the district often operated with a low number of spare vehicles.

The Board of Education recently authorized the purchase of four 12-year Wolfington school buses.

The district uses 12-year buses and 20- year buses. Sangiovanni would gradually like to phase out the 20-year buses.

"If the budget allows it, I would like to see us retire a few buses early and keep them in our fleet," he said. "I would never have bought a 20-year bus. They just don't make it."

Since Brick is so close to the ocean, buses rust much more quickly than they would inland. The MVC issues violations for rust on buses, he said.

A new bus routing software system the district purchased after the audit last year is also helping to turn things around, Sangiovanni said.

For example, last summer the district had 61 buses in operation for summer programs. This year, the number has been trimmed to 39.

The Board of Education voted 5-0 to renew Sangiovanni's contract at the June 26 meeting. He received a $3,377 raise, which brought his salary up to $88,867, district Business Administrator James Edwards has said.

The auditing firm listed 53 recommendations last year if the district kept the transportation department in-house.

Sangiovanni has addressed 37 of the recommendations in his first year on the job, Edwards has said.

"We still have a lot of work to do, obviously," Sangiovanni said. "Not to toot my own horn, but I'm hearing from people that this is the best it's ever been run. Last year we walked in and all we could do was try and get through."