Windham County students were able to catch the bus on their first day of school, despite the breakdown of tense contract negotiations between bus drivers and monitors and the private company that employs them.

Unionized drivers and monitors started picketing last week after their employer Travel Kuz, a subsidiary of Beacon Mobility, locked them out of the company’s Brattleboro offices. The lockout follows weeks of continuous back and forth between the company and Vermont Teamsters Local 597, which represents the transportation workers.

While those employees haven’t returned to work, replacement drivers were brought in ahead of students’ first day back “to ensure that transportation runs as smoothly as possible,” wrote Windham Southeast Supervisory Union Superintendent Mark Speno in a s

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