Thursday, October 1, 2026
Certain Rockville Centre students were greeted by new bus drivers on Monday, as the school district’s new contract with Baumann Bus Company officially came into effect.
“I’m really annoyed,” Tara Gillen, who has a daughter in second grade and a son in third grade, told the Herald before the change. “My son likes consistency. I go through a big transition period every September to get him used to a new situation.”
But Gillen said all was well when her son boarded the bus on Monday. “He didn’t really have a problem with the new driver because the bus matron was still the same,” she noted.
Baumann’s first day was “uneventful,” and went off “without a hitch,” according to Schools Superintendent Dr. William Johnson.
“We’re looking for continuity of service,” he had told the Herald, “and to the extent possible, we hope that the drivers who were on the routes remain on them.”
However, not all parents were satisfied with the bus service. One Rockville Centre parent posted to Facebook on Tuesday that a school bus drove past her sixth-grade daughter as she stood at the bus stop for the second day in a row. “Has this happened to anyone else?” she wrote. “Perhaps the new drivers were not informed of the stops? Frustrating!”
The Rockville Centre Board of Education voted to terminate the district’s contract with Baumann, which had been its transportation provider for many years, after the bus company’s drivers went on a two-week strike last month that left the district scrambling to find busing for students.
The district brought Baumann back under contract on Dec. 6, following a bidding period, during which only two bids — one from Baumann and one from Guardian Bus Company — were submitted. Guardian’s bid was lower, by a marginal amount, although “incomplete,” and based on the advice of their lawyers, the district accepted Baumann’s bid.
During the strike, many of the drivers who serviced the district worked their regular routes by joining Guardian, and district officials had praised the company for stepping in during the bus shortage.
Many of the Baumann-to-Guardian transplants wanted to return to Baumann after the school district approved its bid for a contract earlier this month, in order to retain their regular routes, several of the drivers told the Herald.
Those who applied prior to Dec. 12 were told that they would lose their seniority and be treated as new hires, drivers said, with starting wages that amounted to about $2 to $4 less than the hourly rates they had earned before leaving Baumann.
But on Dec. 13, Baumann signed a legally binding memorandum of understanding with the drivers’ union, Local 252, that set priorities for rehires, and ensured that drivers would have the same wages they had when they left.
The memorandum brought the 13 applicants who completed their application prior to the Dec. 12 deadline back up to their old wages and seniority levels.
Richard Hamburger, an attorney for Baumann, said that the drivers who completed the application process are receiving “the identical seniority as though they never left the company.”
Some however, never completed the application process, they said, remaining with Guardian instead.
Billy Nelson, the Rockville Centre School District’s longest active tenured driver for Baumann before the strike — having worked there for 17 years —claimed to be partly responsible for convincing Baumann’s Rockville Centre drivers to move to Guardian. He said that when he saw that Baumann originally wanted to pay him less, before the memorandum, he walked out of the application session.
“It’s a horrible feeling to be treated like that,” he said, adding that he would never work for Baumann again.
