Insurance Issues Leave West Glacier Elementary Without Transportation to Start the School Year

When West Glacier Elementary School students and staff left for the summer, the district thought its transportation situation was figured out.

Long-term bus driver Gerard Byrd, who drove students through the canyon for more than four decades, retired. But an independent contractor stepped up to take on the role after a bidding process.

The district’s school board approved a five-year contract with Dalimata Transportation, LLC, in April. The LLC was first registered with the Secretary of State’s office on March 23.

Vincent Dalimata, the organizer of the LLC, said they formed the company specifically to drive a school bus for West Glacier Elementary. Dalimata grew up outside of West Glacier, went to school at West Glacier Elementary and now has children who attend the school. He knew Byrd and had discussed taking over the role with him.

The school district planned to pay an annual amount to Dalimata Transportation, LLC, starting with a fee of $97,731.

Board chair Courtney Eberhardy, a Glacier National Park employee and former park ranger, said the stretch of road Byrd drove was a dangerous one. But she had been excited for Dalimata Transportation, LLC, to take over, especially because they had a driver who had navigated that road before. That was a quality she viewed as a precondition for the job.

Dalimata said his company’s driver had also held a commercial driver’s license (CDL) for 10 years. The driver didn’t have experience driving a school bus. Over the summer, they got the driver a school bus endorsement for their CDL, and worked to find insurance for the driver.

“When we decided we were going to pursue this, we never expected insurance to be our downfall,” Dalimata said.

But Dalimata received a common response from every insurance carrier he spoke with. The driver needed to have experience operating a school bus. He looked for different solutions, like hiring a new driver. He kept talking to insurance agencies — five in total by the end of the summer.

Eventually, though, the district and company came up against a deadline. School districts in Montana have to adopt a budget ahead of the school year. They must hold a final budget meeting on or before Aug. 20 and adopt a budget by Aug. 25. West Glacier Elementary had budget approval on its Aug. 20 agenda. Transportation is part of that budget — and without a definitive “yes” on the insurance by the time the board needed to approve its budget, Dalimata said the contract had to be canceled.  

It left the district without a way to transport students with only about two weeks before the school year started, Eberhardy said. In an email, she said the district “appreciated all the Dalimata’s efforts as they worked very hard to fulfill this contract to the best of their ability.” Teachers notified families as soon as they knew the bus wouldn’t be an option this year.  

West Glacier students returned to school Sept. 2. Parents of around 10 families who previously relied on the district to transport their students to school now have taken on the responsibility of doing so themselves.

“I feel horrible that we weren’t able to pull this off,” Dalimata said. “I feel like I let a bunch of people down — I know I did. There’s a lot of people that rely on that school bus to haul the kids to school. We did everything we could.”

Bussing challenges aren’t a new issue for school districts. A bus driver shortage made headlines in the Flathead Valley in 2021. That year, Columbia Falls couldn’t hire enough drivers to fill all the district’s typical bus routes. Other districts had similar challenges, with Kalispell Public Schools canceling fall sporting contests due to a lack of drivers. The issue has persisted across the country, with the Economic Policy Institute attributing the challenges to low pay.

But West Glacier Elementary’s situation is unique in that it wasn’t a lack of bus drivers that posed a problem. In fact, much about West Glacier Elementary — one of the smallest school districts in the Flathead Valley, serving around 60 students in grades K-6 — is unique. The school is located in West Glacier, and has access to Glacier National Park. Students regularly engage in hands-on environmental learning through field trips into the park, fly fishing trips and the like. A team of teachers share the school’s day-to-day administrative tasks, like building maintenance, filling out reporting paperwork and discipline.

The district’s head administrator is the county’s superintendent of schools, Marcia Stolfus, who took over the position in June. She spent 18 years heading the county’s special education cooperative before taking over as the county superintendent. Part of her new role is helping districts navigate a challenge like the bussing one West Glacier Elementary is facing.

For now, the affected families have been provided with “individual transfer action contracts,” Eberhardy and Stolfus said. They explained that legally, if a school district cannot provide transport for families, it must reimburse them for the cost of driving students to school. Parents are receiving payment on a per-mile basis for transporting their own students until the district can find a different solution.

Eberhardy is hopeful the transportation issue won’t affect the district’s field trip opportunities, as she said the funds for those come out of a student activities fund. She said the district should be able to use that fund to pay for other bus contractors to facilitate those trips.

But the district’s boundaries are extensive. It serves students in a geographical area that spans from West Glacier to Essex. Eberhardy said students also come to West Glacier from Martin City and Coram. The bus route Byrd drove for years went from Essex into Columbia Falls, along Highway 2. For families who live in the areas Byrd used to serve, the drive to and from school can total hours out of the week.  

Stolfus and Eberhardy said the board is working on coming up with an alternative answer to the challenge, both for the rest of the school year, and for the future. They said they’re too early in the process to expand on what solutions might be on the table. But they say they want to make sure whatever they come up with is a long-term solution.

“Long term vision is of the utmost importance, because this whole time of trying to figure out the next step forward with the Byrd transportation retirement, there was always the thought of, ‘what’s it going to look like in the future?’” Eberhardy said. “Montana’s population is growing. We want to make sure that what we build is sustainable.”

Eberhardy said the district plans to use the year as an information gathering one, researching available options and ideas to see what possibilities could be implemented.

Eberhardy and Stolfus also said they value input from those affected by the district’s transportation challenges. They encouraged those affected by the situation to offer public comment at the district’s next board meeting. Transportation will be on the agenda as a topic of discussion.

The board’s next meeting will be at the school on Sept. 17 at 5:30 p.m.