The non-profit group at the center of the Franklin Township bus fee lawsuit recently fired its transportation director, a local Indiana news channel reported.
According to the Dec. 20 report, officials from the Central Indiana Education Service Center (CIESC) did not give a specific reason for firing Justin Wilczynski, who began as transportation director for the Franklin Township Community School Corporation in April 2009. In July, he became an employee of CIESC when the group signed a contract with the school district to provide bus service to families.
Recently CIESC was named in the lawsuit filed by a parent who is suing Franklin Township Schools over charging school bus fees. On Nov. 2, attorneys representing Lora Hoagland, a mother of two sons who ride the bus, filed the lawsuit in Marion Superior Court claiming that allowing an outside organization to charge parents for bus service to schools violates a provision of Indiana’s constitution that says public education must be tuition-free. A week later, Indiana Attorney General Gregory Zoeller issued a legal opinion stating it is unconstitutional for school districts to end free school bus service by turning transportation over to outside agencies.
Then, in late November, Hoagland’s attorneys filed a petition for class-action status. They will go before a judge at a Jan. 4 scheduled hearing to argue the class certification. Shortly after at a school board meeting, the Franklin Township School District cast its official vote to defend the district in court. Blessing told School Transportation News he is confident that they will receive the class certification.
Blessing said the court has deemed 30 to 40 people sufficient enough to grant the case with class-action status. “It remains to be seen how many will be involved in the lawsuit, but we believe it will be more than 30 to 40 people. There are 8,000 kids in the school district, so we’re comfortable that we’ll have the sufficient number of parents,” he said.
So far Hoagland is the sole plaintiff in the lawsuit. However, there is one person who has agreed to serve as a representative of the parents who have paid the bus fees. As a result, “we’re asking for two classes of people to be certified in the lawsuit because the damages will be different,” Blessing added.
Earlier this year, Franklin Township Schools contracted its bus services to Central Indiana Educational Services Center, which is charging families $47.50 a month for the first child and $45.50 for each additional child to get students to and from school. CIESC is not named in the lawsuit.
Some parents decided to pay for the bus service, but other parents such as Hoagland decided to drive their children to school because they said they couldn’t afford the cost. Hoagland claims driving her sons to school has prevented her from taking her pain medication for her back and knee problems because the medication might interfere with her driving.
Wilczynski has in the past presented at STN’s North American School Bus EXPO in Reno, Nev.
