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WRIGHT TWP. — Crestwood School Board has scheduled a special meeting at 8 a.m. Friday, and the transportation issue will be one topic discussed, but neither Board President Bill Jones nor Solicitor Jack Dean were willing to offer any information beyond confirming school is still set to start Tuesday.
District officials have been tight-lipped since announcing over the weekend that the start of school would be delayed from the originally scheduled first day of Aug. 26 — this past Monday — to Sept. 3. That delay came after a sequence of rapid-fire announcements over a matter of days.
The school board held a special meeting on Aug. 22 that did not include discussion of transportation, but four board members and both Acting Superintendent Joseph Rasmus and incoming Superintendent Bob Mehalick stayed for three hours after the meeting listening to concerns from parents, mostly those with children attending St. Jude’s Elementary, a Diocese of Scranton school.
Parents complained about student pickups as early as 6:30 a.m. for a school only a few miles away, and unsafe pickup locations. By Friday evening, Rasmus said bus routes had been redrawn to address those concerns, giving St. Jude students a dedicated bus run. But on Sunday Mehalick posted a notice on the district website announcing the start of school would be delayed while transportation problems were ironed out.
The district also posted a letter from the new transportation contractor, G. Davis, to the school board and district administration advising the company felt it was “not confident in moving forward with the start of the school year” beginning Aug. 26. No explanation has been given regarding the reasons for that letter.
On Wednesday, neither Jones or Dean would say whether G. Davis remains the transportation contractor for the district. G. Davis was given the contract after the board canceled a contract with Rinehimer Bus Lines because the state Auditor General had found the company and the district lacked mandated paperwork regarding bus driver clearances. Rinehimer has sued the district, a case that is pending