The Pekin Public Schools District 108 Board of Education sent a stern message Monday to Alltown Bus Service.
Fix all the problems that have plagued student transportation across the 11-school district since the start of the academic year by the end of September, or else.
One consequence for failing to meet that deadline would be termination of the district's five-year contract with the Alltown, which includes a $4.8 million payment in the first year.
Parent Matthew Johnson, one of four public speakers at the board's emergency meeting in the Washington Intermediate School cafeteria, supported the board's action.
"This company has a five-year contract with the district and they didn't make it to Day 1," he said. "The board needs to hold their feet to the fire. What's happened is a catastrophic failure of the education process."
Jeff Childers, another parent, said he's worried about what will be happen if Alltown is fired by the district.
"Is there an exit plan and what will be the cost?" Childers asked.
The board selected Alltown as the district's new student transportation provider in February after the Chicago-based company submitted the lowest bid.
The action was needed because the City of Pekin announced last year that it would end its longstanding student bus service with the pre-K through eighth-grade district at the end of the 2025-26 academic calendar.
At Monday's meeting, the board unanimously approved a six-page legal notification presented by Superintendent Leonard Ealey.
The document, sent to executives from Alltown and its parent company, Beacon Mobility, lists 38 contract defaults and 31 necessary corrections.
There also are nine instances of what the document calls prohibited conduct, including releasing "any student at a stop other than that student's assigned and approved stop, or leave any rostered student without transportation."
The district cancelled the two days of school that followed the first day last month for its approximately 2,100 students, blaming the bus problems.
"That decision was made for one reason: student safety," Ealey said.
Bus service for preschoolers was supposed to finally begin Tuesday, but it will start Wednesday.
Ealey said the delay is disappointing, because of progress seen across the district late last week, "but the standard has not changed. We will not begin transporting our youngest students until we have confidence we can do that safely, accurately and reliably.
"A successful implementation of PFEC [Preschool Family Education Center] transportation Wednesday is an important benchmark," he said. "I'm encouraged by the progress we've seen, but PFEC's routing issues demonstrate why we must remain cautious."
Ealey said the bus transportation issues have seeped into extracurricular activities like sports, band and orchestra.
"We've had buses that didn't arrive as scheduled or arrived an hour or more late," he said. "In some cases, these problems have affected other school districts."
Peter Delani, Beacon's vice president of client relations, represented Alltown at the board meeting. He said his company is working to resolve the bus issues.
"We want to earn your trust that we will provide your children with safe and timely transportation," Delani told the parents in the audience.
The "Notice of Default and Opportunity to Cure" document opens with a statement that the district has noticed "numerous and serious deficiencies in Alltown's performance affecting student safety, routing, communication and daily operations.
"These deficiencies have repeatedly disrupted the safe, reliable and timely transportation the district's students, families, and schools depend on and require."
If Alltown fails to fix the issues, the district will pursue other legal remedies in addition to canceling the contract, the document reads.
The 38 contract defaults fall under the categories of safety and student supervision, routing and transportation operations, route information and documentation, communication and operational and service concerns.
A specific example under the routing and transportation operations category is the "Smith 1" bus route, referring to C.B. Smith Primary School.
"As of Aug. 27, the route is scheduled to start at 7:09 a.m., but the driver assigned to it runs a Broadmoor [Junior High School] route that doesn't end until 7:50 a.m.," the document reads.
Ealey praised district office staff, principals, secretaries, special education staff, teachers and others who have "worked student by student, stop by stop, and route by route to verify information, provide corrections, review revised routes and communicate with families."
