English School District ends bus contract with Kelloway Investments

A St. John's-based school bus operator has lost its contract with the province's English school board, less than four months after the company was first suspended from picking up students and charged with more than 50 traffic violations.

Kelloway Investments, which was responsible for the transportation of 3,500 students across 22 schools, had its contract suspended by the Newfoundland and Labrador School District (NLESD) last January, after inspectors wth Service NL found various problems related to brakes and emergency doors.

Owner Jim Kelloway told CBC News Thursday that the contract was terminated not because of the state of his buses, but instead because his drivers failed to complete a newly-required online safety training course called Safe Pupil.

Terry Hall, the board's assistant director responsible for student transportation, said the Safe Pupil training program is a way to ensure drivers are aware of regualtions.

Hall said it was just one of many factors used when considering Kelloway's contract, and the termination followed a lengthy and rigorous investigation.

He said the decision to end the board's contract with Kelloway was not based solely on the training course alone.

With the school year soon coming to an end, Hall said the board will keep the temporary bus situation it has in place. Tenders for the next school year, he said, will be made available in the coming weeks.

Intends to sue

Kelloway plans to seek legal action against the board, arguing that the course was not suitable for drivers in Newfoundland and Labrador, and that the district should have been more involved in the training. He said he's talked to other contractors who are also having difficulty with the training program.

"We should have been trained ourselves. Why didn't the school board have meetings or something, not just put it right on the contractor?" Kelloway told CBC by phone on Thursday.

"It's a totally different system. We should have our own system that is designed for Newfoundland and Canada, not something that was designed for drivers in the United States."

Kelloway said he's spent the last several months making sure his buses were upgraded and brought up to the Service NL requirements, so it's extremely frustrating to now learn his contract has been terminated for a completely different reason.

"I believe the school district wanted to be the judge and jury here," he said. "We took steps which cost my company several thousand dollars for each bus to go out and have them all independently inspected, which they all passed."

"It's a big shock for a large company like me, who is self employed, for the government to cancel us and take us off the road."

Kelloway Investments also came under fire recently when CBC published a story about a student who suffered frostbite after a bus was almost an hour late picking her up. Kelloway said the bus was late because Service NL unexpectedly performed inspections prior to buses leaving to pick students up.

Plan to sell buses

Kelloway said buses that failed inspections in January have been upgraded and are in great shape, with even the most used vehicle only having 20,000 km on it. A few older buses were not brought up to code, but Kelloway said the plan was to keep them for parts and not to put them back on the roads.

Now that he's lost his contract with the NLESD, he plans on selling the buses to a contractor in Quebec.

"Every bus that was in the fleet was reinspected, and as far as I'm concerned I should have been allowed to go back on the road and conduct my business," he said.

"I'm just glad I got this deal made with this bus company in Quebec so that I can breathe and sleep through the night."