Taken for a Ride: Hawaii's Runaway School Bus Costs

Katherine Poythress/Civil Beat

Editor's note: This is the first in a series on Hawaii's runaway school bus costs. Read other articles on the topic published today.

In 2009, Hawaii taxpayers paid Roberts Hawaii $200 a day to operate a bus route serving Kohala Elementary and High schools on the Big Island.

Roberts had held the contract for a few years, after it won the bid by undercutting two other bus companies.

But when that contract expired, no other bus company stepped up to compete, and the Hawaii Department of Education agreed to pay Roberts' new asking price. This time it was $584 — a 190 percent increase — to do the same job.

That's just one of the many egregious examples of huge increases in school bus payments by the education department unearthed by a Civil Beat investigation.

Civil Beat analyzed hundreds of bid documents spanning 11 years and found that competition among school bus contractors came to an abrupt halt in 2008.

In fact, while educators and lawmakers have been bemoaning the cost increases and questioning whether lack of competition was the cause, in the last four years, not a single regular school bus route in Hawaii has drawn competitive bids. Over that same period, the department hasn't rejected a single bid, as is its right, to try to get a better price for taxpayers.

As a result, Hawaii is spending $1,850 per student on school bus transportation this year — more than twice the national average of $900 in 2008, the most recent year reported. In 2008, Hawaii averaged about $1,200 per student.

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