Our local conservative paper here in Madison, WI, doesn't care about the safety of our children until they figure out that it's people of color who are endangering them.
The thrust of the story is this: Mr. Mom's Transport, a local company started ten years ago, bought out a company called Evergreen Transport, which had a school bus contract. When they bid to renew last April, administrators declined to recommend approval because their bid was "incomplete." Mr. Mom's and another local company, Badger Bus, were both left off the recommended list, and both complained that the process favored larger companies. The school board ultimately renewed the contracts.
But now Mr. Mom's is going to lose the contract, and for good reason - the buses are unsafe, the students are being dropped off at the wrong places (or not dropped off at all), and a number of other things have gone wrong.
And the State Journal seems to think that's because the company is owned by a Hispanic woman married to a black man.
Details (and links) on the flip.
Apparently the company has been in trouble for a few years, but the public didn't hear much about it until The Capital Times reported on September 21 that
the company had operated for three weeks without insurance. Heh heh. Whoops.
Then the Capital Times reported on its October 6 front page that there were numerous other problems:
Last week, when a busload of Spring Harbor Middle School students was returning from a field trip, the brakes failed.
No one was hurt. The driver, an employee of Mr. Mom's Transport Service, was able to roll into a curb in front of the school to bring the bus to a halt.
When a bus inspector from the State Patrol turned up the next day, the brakes were fixed, but improperly. The inspector, Toni Morrow, found a loose brake pad, a tire with low treads, a window problem and excessive play in the steering wheel.
Turns out the driver had logged the steering problem two days before Wednesday's incident, but nothing was done about it.
A bunch of buses failed inspections, paychecks bounced, at least once there was still a kid on board when a bus returned to the garage, and on and on. And it wasn't just with the school buses either; the company was in hot water on a county contract, too.
Meanwhile, the State Journal didn't see it as news fit to print until October 13, when it dawned on them that the owner, Cathy Quiroga-Smith, is also the president of the local Latino Chamber of Commerce, and is married to {gasp!} a black man!
Their first story on the topic, buried in the local section, has this gem in the second paragraph:
The loss of the routes comes a year after the Madison School Board asked district administrators to award some of its contracts for student transportation to the local, minority-owned bus service.
Subtle. Well, not really, but not overt racism. Notice it doesn't say "because it was minority-owned." Only that the board awarded the contract to the company, which happens to be minority-owned. What really happened is that the company already had the contract, and the school board opted to stay with them, a locally-owned business with many minority employees.
Minority or not, the company is falling apart, and stands to lose its contract after being forced to subcontract more than half its routes.
And I have no argument with that. I know Cathy personally, and make no excuses for her or Jeff (her husband). I worry what this will do to our Latino Chamber of Commerce and the Latino business community in general. But the school should be able to have some reasonable confidence that its buses have, like, brakes that work and stuff.
Then yesterday came this bit of fun:
Political correctness is costing the Madison School Board dearly.
The School Board wanted so badly to award a contract to a small, local, minority-owned bus company last year that it rejected the advice of staff, who had painstakingly analyzed a handful of prospective vendors.
...
Small and minority-owned companies deserve a fair shot at bus contracts. But they shouldn't get extra consideration when the safety of children is at stake.
They didn't get extra consideration. They didn't the contract based on race alone. The board stuck with a vendor who had been working with the district for years; they opted for a locally-owned company; the only reason administrators didn't recommend them was that their proposal was "incomplete." Not inadequate. When asked for additional information, the company provided it. And the other company offered "extra consideration," Badger Bus, is not minority-owned.
What gets me most is that the State Journal, our local conservative paper, didn't think that a company compromising the safety of our children was newsworthy. Nope, that wasn't at all interesting until they realized it was brown people endangering our children. Then, it's not only news, it's fodder for an overblown editorial. Ugh.