Montville — Putting aside concerns raised by the superintendent about an aging bus fleet and a perhaps antiquated public school transportation model, four of Montville’s school board members on Tuesday shot down a proposed contract with an Illinois-based company to take over the district’s busing.

Montville’s school bus drivers and their supporters got in the first word at Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting, speaking against the district’s decision to issue a request for bids in October and asking the board not to vote in favor of the contract.

Drivers and their supporters spoke about drivers that knew children’s names and families, and said those drivers might leave Montville if they lost the benefits they receive as town employees, statements that Montville Superintendent Brian Levesque called "scare tactics."

“There's a reason why schools are not in the business of transportation,” Levesque said. “They will run a more efficient and safer operation than we do.”

Private companies operate bus transportation for most nearby school districts. Montville is one of only 12 districts in the state to operate its own fleet and employ its own drivers.

The contract with Durham School Services, which has deals to operate school bus systems nationally and in a handful of Connecticut towns, would have saved the town more than $2 million in operating costs, taxes and capital expenses over the next five years, Levesque said.

The five-year contract that Levesque’s office negotiated with Durham would have included an agreement that the company would purchase many of the vehicles in Montville’s bus fleet and buy 24 new buses to replace the older town vehicles, some of which are up to 20 years old.

The district has tried to purchase new buses using money in the town’s capital budget in previous years and been turned down, Levesque said Tuesday. The last time the district bought new buses, it used a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency.

"The town is not in the position to support this capital," he said, citing impending cuts to town aid in the state budget that currently is being negotiated by legislators.

Keith Galloway, Durham’s director of business development, defended his company’s commitment to safety and assured the drivers that his company would offer them and the town garage mechanics jobs if the contract was approved.

But a majority of the seven present school board members — Joe Aquitante, Carrie Thomas Baxter, Daniel Bosivert and Colleen Rix — weren’t convinced.

Two board members, Sandra Berardy and Steven Loiler, were absent from Tuesday's meeting.

After an executive session following Tuesday’s meeting, Rix said in an interview that she felt she hadn’t had enough time to consider the proposed contract and had been convinced by town residents’ comments on Facebook to vote against it.

“My main decision was based on what the community wants,” she said.

Levesque, and several members of the Town Council and other town boards who gathered after the vote, appeared shaken by the decision. Chuck Longton, who chairs the Town Council's Finance Committee, called the vote "stupid."

"I think it’s a huge mistake," Levesque said after walking out of a scheduled executive session of the school board alone.

The school board voted in October to issue the request for local bus companies to bid on the district’s transportation contract and assess whether striking a deal with a private company could save the district money.

Four companies submitted bids, and district officials met with representatives from three of them, Levesque told an audience of parents, drivers and other district employees at Tuesday's school board meeting.

The school board employs about 35 drivers and three mechanics, all members of the Teamsters Local 493 union chapter. The union contract with the school board is due for renegotiation in June and expires in August, and school officials said they wanted to take advantage of the timing to consider whether the district could save money by contracting with a private company instead.

Montville drivers vocally opposed the contract, saying Montville has long been a popular destination for drivers because of the favorable wages and benefits it offers, and they were worried they will lose the benefits in their union contract if the school board votes to outsource district transportation.

They also had portrayed the private transportation companies as less personally invested in the district's students.

Moira Gortner, a driver who said she had been opposed to the privatization, said Tuesday that Durham's presentation had changed her mind, and that she would have supported moving to a private contractor if she had known more about the deal beforehand.

"They had me sold," she said. "It makes sense."

But, she said, "there was no information. Nobody knew anything."

m.shanahan@theday.com