BUTLER TWP — The Butler School Board Monday night voted to approve a contract amendment with its busing contractor Valley Lines to address non-compliance issues.

The board voted in April to authorize officials to negotiate an amendment after hearing a report one month earlier listing contract violations, including having buses on the road that were more than 10 years old.

The age of buses is a key factor in a formula for state transportation reimbursement.

The district has used Valley Lines, which is based in Armstrong County, since 2004. The current contract runs through the end of June 2020.

The terms of the amendment were negotiated by Acting Superintendent William Pettigrew and board member Al Vavro and reviewed by district solicitor Tom King and district transportation supervisor Debby Croft.

Under the amendment, Valley Lines agreed to have the money the district lost in transportation reimbursement and money for overbilling subtracted from its monthly payments this year.

Valley Lines owed about $110,000 to the district, though the district had already subtracted $15,558 from a payment earlier this year to address overbilling for Butler County Vocational Technical School runs, Pettigrew said.

Also included in the amendment was a new requirement for the age of the buses. Instead of requiring regular buses to be no more than 10 years old, they are now to be no more than eight years old.

“They assured us that all the buses will meet our requirements as far as age,” Vavro said.

The language of the contract also was rewritten to avoid any confusion about the bus ages.

“All the gray is gone,” Pettigrew said. “The language is clear.”

Valley Lines also agreed to install new surveillance systems in each of its buses. The new systems will include audio recording and camera angles showing both the inside of the bus and what the driver is seeing on the road.

The requirement for upgraded camera systems in the buses was included in the original contract, though Valley Lines had not installed them and there was some confusion about the contract language, Pettigrew said.

While investigating an accident on Bonniebrook Road in Summit Township last year, officials learned that some of Valley Lines' buses were more than 10 years old. The school board then hired specialists from the Armstrong Indiana Intermediate Unit to perform an analysis of the contract and report back to the board at a cost of $650.

The report indicated that Valley Lines had 109 buses on the road since 2008 that were in violation of the contract. The report gave the board the options of seeking $1.93 million in penalties from Valley Lines, terminating the contract or negotiating a contract amendment to address the noncompliance.

In a letter to district officials dated March 16, Valley Lines CEO William Clepper said that he would honor the findings of the independent report and offered to pay the lost subsidies.

The district did not seek the $1.93 million penalty, King said Monday night. That option likely would have caused a lawsuit or costly litigation, he said.

The company employs about 175 drivers and uses 120 buses for the district.