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Contract renegotiations save H-F High money

District 233 Business Manager Lawrence Cook was able to save the district nearly $230,000 by renegotiating three contracts due to the coronavirus pandemic.

RJB Properties, responsible for cleaning Homewood-Flossmoor High School, is working with a skeletal crew. Tom Wagner, the district’s operations manager, recommended the board try to renegotiate the contract, and Cook was able to get the fees reduced by 25 percent from April 15 through June 30. Cook said the total savings is $64,745.

Cook said the district is concluding a two-year contract with RJB and agreed to a 2020-21 contract extension for $1,243,113.

Cook also was able to renegotiate costs for bus service. Fees fluctuate monthly. 

When Gov. J.B. Pritzker instructed the Illinois State Board of Education to close schools March 17, it was recommended school districts continue paying contracts at an 80 percent rate to ensure bus company employees were being paid.

“The thinking then was we’d be returning in two weeks or so,” Cook said. As the school closing was extended to April 30, the District 233 board asked Cook to review the contracts. A second state order now has closed schools to the end of the academic year.

Cook found some districts were paying the 80 percent, but other reimbursements were as low as 40 percent.

Superintendent Von Mansfield told board members April 21 negotiations “came down to the wire,” but Cook worked out deals with both Kickert School Bus Lines for regular student transportation and Alpha School Bus Company, Inc. for special education transportation.

Kickert has had a five-year contract with District 233. The current contract expires June 30.

Negotiations between Cook and Kickert representatives got payments down to 60 percent. Alpha agreed to a 70 percent payment. 

“The total payment for Kickert and Alpha for the months of April and May is $402,406,” Cook told the Chronicle. “The savings for combined months will be $164,885.”

He pointed out that the district also saved approximately $75,000 in bus costs because field trips and sports were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The last field trip was March 12.

ISBE should reimburse the district $131,233, but that “depends on how much will be in the transportation budget when Illinois does its reimbursements,” Mansfield said. 

Board member Debbie Berman thanked Cook for “his leadership in these negotiations. It strikes a really good balance between trying to be fiscally conservative, but also to be smart because if we tell our bus companies we’re not going to pay anything, we may not have bus companies when we need them.”

Board member Beth Larocca agreed, saying Cook’s efforts were important to the district but also for the “support of companies because it’s often hard to find drivers.”

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