On a cloudy November morning in 2015, a school bus packed with children darted out of a side street in Lakewood and plowed into the front of Jose Osorio’s 2001 Honda Civic, exploding into flames, according to a police report.

As the vehicles burned, Osorio, still dazed from the crash, realized children were trapped inside the bus, said his attorney, Victor Covelli. He leapt from his car, ignoring his pain, and helped the kids escape.

He tried to quell the flames, “but in the end, the police had to keep the fire from engulfing the bus,” Covelli said.

This was not the first time a school bus operated by Jay’s Bus Service — a Lakewood-based company that operates in two counties — had been involved in a dangerous crash with children aboard.

In fact, Jay’s buses have been in 78 accidents since November 2015 — the highest crash total of any private bus company in New Jersey. The company has double the average crash rate of all bus companies that operate in the state, transportation records show.

A 2018 Wayne University professor’s study of three major school bus companies in different states found 2% to 3% of those companies’ vehicles were in crashes over a two-year period. Jay’s has a crash rate roughly five times that over two years, according to federal transportation data.

Over the past three and a half years, Jay’s crashes have injured 33 people, including children. Parents say their kids, and other drivers on the road, are at risk.

“Jay’s is the worst," said Michele Bianco, a Howell resident whose son rides a Jay’s bus to school. He’s taken other contracted bus services before, too, but with Jay’s, “they fly … they speed,” she said. “They wait until the last minute to put the reds on and you have to slam on your brakes.”

In addition to Jay’s eye-popping rate of crashes, an NJ Advance Media review of public records, state transportation data and hundreds of court documents revealed further issues with Jay’s drivers, bus inspections, and traffic and safety violations.

Several Jay’s drivers have been charged with serious violations, including one who was caught driving drunk with a bus full of children and another who was charged with DWI after slamming into a parked car while high on oxycodone.

Jay’s has maintained one of the worst inspection records among large bus companies in New Jersey, failing more than three-quarters of its inspections, state data showed. Mechanics say the buses are full of old, broken parts. Inspection records revealed the company has been cited several dozen times for leaks and bald tires.

In addition, Jay’s drivers have racked up hundreds of traffic tickets in the past 10 years, including 14 for careless driving, 15 for delaying traffic and eight for using their phone while driving, according to court records obtained by NJ Advance Media and matched to two years of Jay’s rosters. Many offenses were logged while driving school buses.

Yet despite a torrent of complaints against the company, Jay’s continues shuttling thousands of kids to and from school each day in 20 public districts all over Monmouth and Ocean counties. All told, public districts have contracted with the company for at least $6.5 million per year, state records show – and that total is going up. In February, Lakewood’s school board expanded its contract with Jay’s, giving the company $2.4 million to transport public school children.

Joseph Ellison, the founder and owner of Jay’s, declined several requests for comment from NJ Advance Media for this story, by phone, email and during a visit to the company’s headquarters in Lakewood.

Meanwhile, several districts that contract with Jay’s also declined to discuss the company’s safety record. Michael Inzelbuch, Lakewood’s school board attorney, placed responsibility on the state.

“We are simply mandated to make sure that any bus company is vendor-approved by the DMV,” Inzelbuch said.

But transportation experts said Jay’s safety record sends up red flags and the company needs better oversight. At least one of its drivers wasn’t even qualified to be behind the wheel. John Koslowski Jr., the bus driver who slammed into Osorio’s car in November 2015, had his commercial license downgraded eight months before the crash, records show. His license was not restored until a year after the accident.

“At what point should drivers lose their job?” state Sen. Robert Singer, R-30th Dist., who represents Lakewood and sits on the transportation committee, asked when presented with information about Jay’s.

“Maybe we should study that.”

Keeping kids safe

A school bus in one of the municipal lots in Lakewood that is part of the Jay's Bus Service fleet. (Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media

Bus companies statewide are facing increasing safety scrutiny following a high-profile accident. Last year, a 77-year-old driver working for the Paramus school district allegedly made an illegal U-turn on Interstate 80 and was struck by a dump truck, killing a teacher and student from an elementary school.

And the state is facing a drastic shortage of qualified drivers, experts said. Even with raised pay, it’s hard to find people who meet the qualifications and want to work odd hours, according to transportation insiders. (New Jersey bus drivers make an average of $37,970 annually, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.)

Lakewood in particular has even higher demand for busing. One of the fastest-growing towns in the country, it has a large Orthodox Jewish community that sends thousands of children to private schools known as Yeshivas. The median age of the town’s population is only 22.

Jay’s became one of the private companies to capitalize on this demand. Ellison, who founded Jay’s in 2008 as just a fleet of a few vans, has overseen a company that exploded from roughly 50 buses in 2011 to 450 in 2017, according to state inspection records.

The company’s biggest contract in 2017-18 was $15 million to transport students to local Yeshivas in Lakewood. The township pays for the arrangement with public funds through a contracting organization, the Lakewood Student Transportation Authority.

Morris Wilder, a mechanic and driver who started working for Jay’s in 2008, alleged that as Jay’s grew, Ellison pushed the company’s drivers and mechanics to keep up. Wilder said he worked late nights fixing problems and keeping the buses running.

The extra time on roads in Ocean and Monmouth counties affected Jay’s fleet, Wilder said. “But (Ellison) was not willing to put money into parts," he said.

(Wilder was involved in a high-profile road rage incident while driving a Jay’s bus in 2016. He says he left the company soon after, though would not discuss details of the incident.)

As Lakewood’s transportation system grew, so did its financial problems, because the district is obligated to pay for the high volume of private school transportation. In 2014, the state attempted to contain Lakewood’s booming costs by appointing a state monitor, Mike Azzara, to oversee its finances.

Azzara said that during his tenure, the town had a shortage of bus drivers, and Jay’s response was to allow drivers with accident records and suspended licenses to stay behind the wheel. (Azzara stepped down in 2018. The private school busing system was still millions in debt last year, records show.)

“He was putting as many drivers in seats as he could,” Azzara said. “And he wasn’t doing maintenance.”

Azzara also said Jay’s assigned drivers to routes in far-flung towns across Monmouth and Ocean counties. “Jay’s had drivers going down to Long Branch and then racing back to Lakewood,” Azzara said, highlighting towns roughly 25 miles apart. “They were squeezed for time.”

Azzara also noticed that Jay’s buses often failed safety inspections from the New Jersey Motor Vehicles Commission. According to MVC data, the percentage of Jay’s buses that failed initial inspections rose from about 50% in 2011 to 89% in 2019.

The statewide average failure rate is 47% among all bus companies, private and public, according to an MVC spokeswoman.

During the 2014-15 school year, Azzara said he hired Gus Kakavas as a consultant to monitor Jay’s safety quality. Kakavas said he inspected the company’s mechanic shop for a few weeks, taking buses off the road if he noticed problems. In that time period, the state inspection failures dropped, data shows.

Kakavas left the role that same year, believing his work was finished. By the next year, Jay’s failure rate crept up again, records show.

According to Michael Belzer, a professor from Wayne University, there’s a national trend of school districts outsourcing transportation to private companies rather than operating their own buses to save money. He said those private companies often come with “substantial safety issues."

“There’ll be a cost in terms of injuries and fatalities,” Belzer said. “It might make the bean counter’s budget look better, but the true cost might be higher.”

Lakewood cited potential savings of $7 million when it announced its switch to private busing. The district superintendent declined to comment for this story.

After the crashes

Jose Rivera stands along East County Line Road in Lakewood, the site of his crash in 2015.

Jose Rivera was driving home to Lakewood in December 2013 when he rounded a bend on a wide county road and faced the toughest choice of his life. A Jay’s school bus had cut him off, he said, leaving two options: left or right.

“Either I was going to go under the bus or into a tree,” Rivera said.

He swerved toward the back of the bus as another car slammed into him from the side, according to the police report. He said his head hit the steering wheel and everything went black. When he awakened, his vision was blurry and his ankle throbbed.

“I wouldn’t wish this on anybody,” said Rivera, who in 2015 sued Jay’s for compensation for his injuries.

He’s not alone. At least 12 other lawsuits name Jay’s as a defendant between 2014 and 2018, according to state court records. Most of the complaints involve driver conduct and accidents. One complaint accused the company of injuring a minor on a bus when it jumped a curb traveling through Lakewood in 2015. Another student fell on top of the girl and pinned her down, injuring the girl’s head and scarring her face, according to court records.

Jay’s denied liability in court documents but settled the case with the minor’s guardians for $25,000 in 2018, records show. Plaintiffs have settled with the bus company for tens of thousands of dollars, all in agreements where Jay’s admits no fault.

Rivera said he was diagnosed with a degenerative back condition after his accident with a Jay’s bus, requiring years of therapy. He also needed ankle surgery and said he suffered from headaches so bad he “had to put an ice pack on my head to even fall asleep.”

Rivera settled his lawsuit with Jay’s for $55,000 in 2017, records show. Remarkably, though, a Jay’s bus hit Rivera yet again in 2016, according to a police report. Bus driver Frank Cuccurullo swiped the side of Rivera’s car on New Hampshire Avenue in Lakewood while making a too-broad turn into a parking lot. No one was injured, the police report shows.

Cuccurullo, who still works for the company, admitted fault, according to the police report.

Charles Little, an attorney who represented Jay’s in several lawsuits, did not return several phone messages seeking comment.

Bus safety in New Jersey

Young students board a Jay's bus at the end of the school day in Lakewood. (Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media

The state publishes bus inspection data twice annually on a public website, potentially making state and local officials aware of the issues at Jay’s. But when it comes to taking action against the company, MVC spokesman Jim Hooker said, the agency’s hands are tied.

“We pull buses out of circulation (for repair issues), and we don’t allow them to take the road again until they’re fit,” Hooker said.

But penalizing Jay’s for its high inspection failure rate “would probably be in the realm of legislation, which we don’t comment on,” he said.

Following the Paramus accident and other incidents, the New Jersey State Legislature has taken up the issue of school bus safety in the past year. A new bill signed into law in December would require districts to double check that their bus drivers haven’t had their licenses suspended. (It would not, however, require districts to monitor driver ticket or accident records.)

Another bill required the Department of Education to study bus safety issues. The results have not been published yet.

But lawmakers admit there’s more to do.

State Sen. Robert Singer said Jay’s highlights safety issues that need to be probed further.

“Have we sacrificed safety for money?” he said. “We need to take a look at it.”

The only penalty bus companies can incur from the state is for failing to present a bus for inspection or keeping improper records, Hooker said. The MVC has cited Jay’s 10 times since April 2016, all for keeping improper records documenting maintenance and inspection of school buses and vans.

NJ Advance Media emailed a list of questions to Robert Finger, the Lakewood district interim school business administrator. Finger said the district decided not to comment for this story.

In December, Lakewood hired Ingrid Reitano, the previous safety supervisor for Jay’s, to serve as the new transportation supervisor for public busing. She did not return a phone message requesting comment.

NJ Advance Media attempted to reach out via email and phone calls to all 20 school districts that have contracted with Jay’s. Superintendents for the Freehold Regional, Central Regional and Middletown school districts said they hadn’t noticed any problems with Jay’s.

Peter Genovese, a spokesman for the Long Branch school district, said the district asked each of its contractors for trial routes before the school year began to familiarize drivers with the quirks of each route. The district reviews every accident, even fender-benders, he said.

“We have to look into even minor things, because children’s safety is paramount,” Genovese said.

It’s not clear whether Lakewood or the second-largest district Jay’s contracts with, the Monmouth-Ocean Regional Transport, follow the same protocol. Neither returned repeated requests for comment.

One group has been long aware of Jay’s misbehavior: Some parents and drivers in districts where Jay’s buses roam.

Michael Rush, a member of a committee appointed to oversee the Lakewood Student Transportation Authority, said he notices children standing and shouting on Jay’s buses.

“They almost never buckle down,” he said.

Jay’s Facebook page features numerous complaints about speeding, dangerous driving and out-of-control kids.

Michele Bianco, the Howell resident whose son takes a Jay’s bus, said she’s seen buses speed, go through red lights and run stop signs. She also said the bus was often late until she complained to the school district.

When asked about buckling down, her son, a high school student, said only “the kids in the front wear seat belts.”

Seat belts are required by law for all schoolchildren.

Bianco said she felt bus drivers weren’t held to the same standards other drivers are.

“They always say, ‘people should stop when the bus is stopped,’ and that’s true,” she said. “But we never hear about what the buses do.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include additional information about Morris Wilder, the former mechanic and driver who worked for Jay’s.

Former staff reporter Marisa Iati and staff photographer Patti Sapone contributed to this report.

Erin Petenko may be reached at epetenko@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @EPetenko. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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