Roanoke school officials expect to have a contract with a private school bus company ready by today, giving the city's school board several days to read it over before Tuesday, when the board is scheduled to vote on outsourcing school transportation.

If the contract between the district and Pennsylvania-based Krapf Bus Cos. is approved, Roanoke would become the region's only school system with privatized transportation, something that is almost unheard of in Virginia but that is common practice in other states.

Deputy Superintendent of Operations Curt Baker said a private contractor would save the school system roughly $250,000 a year, while also modernizing Roanoke's rickety bus fleet. The school system is paying roughly $7.3 million a year to run buses right now.

But outsourcing school busing to a private company has been met with deep skepticism by bus drivers, who are concerned about their jobs and their benefits.

Transportation has been a source of headaches for Roanoke school officials for years. The average age of a city school bus is 13.7 years, higher than the state's recommended average age of 12 years. Next year's budget includes no money to buy new buses.

The buses are so old that administrators have to look through junkyards for parts, because manufacturers have stopped producing them, Baker said, adding that the school system would need to spend about $1 million per year to update the fleet of 150 buses.

Two weeks ago, a 14-year-old school bus caught fire. No one was hurt, but the bus was destroyed. School officials also routinely spend the first few weeks of school fielding calls from parents about missed or late buses.

Those are problems Baker hopes to fix by bringing in a private contractor. Krapf would be responsible for buying new buses and maintaining them, allowing school officials to focus their energy on instruction.

"There is a replacement cycle that is agreed in the contract and an average age clause," he said.

Over the past few weeks, board members have peppered Baker with questions about the new arrangement. On Wednesday, school board Chairman David Carson said that while he still has questions about outsourcing, he was pleased with the savings. That's money "that we can potentially save and plow back into our teachers and students," he said.

In January, school officials invited companies to bid for the city's business. Of the three finalists, a committee selected Krapf and started meeting with company officials to draft a contract.

Krapf and the other two finalists, Durham School Services and First Student, would charge roughly similar prices, a daily rate ranging from about $200 to $237 per route.

"When all is said and done, they're so close that there's no meaningful difference in price," Baker said.

But Krapf was the only bidder that offered to buy the school system's bus fleet -- for four annual payments of $495,000 -- and rent the district's transportation facility for $60,000 a year.

But Pat Wright, a bus driver, said the proposal had created anxiety among the transportation system's roughly 120 employees.

"Our primary goal is to basically make sure that we have jobs," she said.

Krapf has not told drivers whether they would be able to keep their jobs, she said, although Baker said he expected current drivers would be allowed to stay. It's still unclear, however, what benefits drivers would receive, whether their sick time would carry over, or how many hours they would be able to work. Right now, drivers are guaranteed 5¹₂ hours of work a day, but many get more hours by driving students to athletic events.

And although their base pay is likely to be higher under a private contractor, drivers are worried that they will have to give up their investments in the state retirement system.

"We're working these hours to get these children to and from school and they're not telling us anything," Wright said.

Another driver, Shelby Butler, who has been driving for 36 years, said: "My policy is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it."