As a new school bus vendor on Maui struggles to find credentialed drivers before the school year begins Monday, the Department of Education says it will halt bus routes for nearly 400 students and issue bus passes for use on the island’s public transportation.

The department Tuesday said it will temporarily suspend all routes serving students of Lahainaluna High School, Baldwin High in Wailuku and Iao Intermediate School until 10 to 12 drivers with a required commercial driver’s license are recruited. The disruption in service will affect 383 students, but no special-education students will be affected.

Honolulu-based Ground Transport Inc. was awarded three of Maui’s four bus contracts covering Wailuku, Kahului, Kihei and Lahaina for a seven-year term from July 1 through mid-2024.

Louis Gomes, the company’s president, says the company is actively recruiting drivers on Maui. He acknowledges there is a bus driver shortage nationally and locally but says the problem has been amplified because of what he calls “scare tactics” by the company that previously held all of the Maui school bus contracts. He also says his recruitment efforts were stalled for eight months while his competitor challenged the bid award in court.

Veteran transportation company Roberts Hawaii, which previously operated all of the Maui school bus routes, was awarded the fourth Maui contract serving Upcountry schools. Roberts’ routes are not affected by the suspension announcement.

“We’ve tried everything possible to get drivers prior to the start of the school year, and we are still actively recruiting,” Gomes said in an interview, citing newspaper and radio advertisements, participation at job fairs and incentives such as hire-on bonuses. “Obviously, I don’t like being in this situation where we can’t service routes.”

Roberts Hawaii disputed the bids awarded to Ground Transport, filing a complaint with the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. After review a hearing officer ruled in favor of the DOE. The company then appealed that decision to Circuit Court, where a judge also reaffirmed the contracts were awarded properly.

Gomes says the litigation between Roberts Hawaii and the DOE prevented his company from being able to recruit until late June, when the last appeals deadline passed.

“We would’ve thought that with Roberts Hawaii losing 71 of their routes on Maui, that some of those employees would’ve applied with Ground Transport. They’re not applying,” Gomes said.

Gomes claims that Roberts Hawaii employees have told him the company has tried to undermine Ground Transport’s hiring efforts by, for example, offering retention bonuses to counter Ground Transport’s hiring bonuses.

Roberts Hawaii executives deny interfering with Gomes’ recruiting. Percy Higashi, president of Roberts Hawaii, said in an interview that he was shocked to hear such allegations when he was called into a meeting last week by the chairman of the Board of Education and interim superintendent. (Roberts still holds 51 percent of school bus routes statewide.)

“All of our drivers are at will,” Higashi recalled saying in that meeting. “And all of our drivers are part of our (employee stock ownership plan).”

He added that his company is also recruiting, noting that statewide Roberts Hawaii, which operates tour buses in addition to school buses, is currently 75 drivers short. Roberts also operates the Maui Bus public transit system.

“Because we are not only in the school bus business … our drivers can be moved to different locations to work. As much as we can, we want to keep our drivers — we can keep them working outside of the school year,” Higashi said. “We don’t keep them just so that Ground (Transport) can’t hire them. We’re keeping them because we need them.”

Roberts spokesman Nathan Hokama said the DOE is to blame for the suspended routes because it “chose an unproven contractor, totally new to Maui, that had to start from scratch building its infrastructure and hire drivers they didn’t have.”

Gomes counters that his company is well versed in the local school bus industry. He’s purchased 80 new vehicles for Maui, including school buses for regular-education students and specialty vans for special-needs students.

“We’re on Maui, we’re there to stay,” Gomes said. “Ground Transport has 27 years of being in the school bus industry. We operate 140 to 150 school buses on the island of Oahu. Although we may be new to the Maui market, we are definitely familiar with the industry. We strictly do school buses; we’re not in the tour business or any other industries.”

DOE Assistant Superintendent Dann Carlson, whose office oversees student transportation, declined to comment on the contract dispute but said the department is “working feverishly to try to minimize any impacts to students.”

Interested driver applicants can call the DOE’s student transportation services branch at 586-0170.