Minutes before Hamilton County Board of Education members were scheduled to hear a presentation by the company which submitted the lowest bid to provide school bus service here for the next four years, the company's representatives got the news.

Laidlaw, the low bidder, had been taken over by First Group PLC - the parent company of First Student, the company which currently operates school buses for Hamilton County schools.

In its bid, Laidlaw agreed to provide school bus services next year for $8.

9 million.

First Student's bid, for almost $9.8 million, was the highest one received.

Laidlaw representatives, although obviously stunned by the news, carried on with their presentation.

"We stand behind our bid," Laidlaw representative Keith Brown told board members. "We can understand your concern, but our proposal won't change."

Under the terms of the bidding process, although Laidlaw has been bought out, the company is still locked into its $8.9 million bid.

Business journals have carried reports of a potential takeover for weeks; Britain's Financial Times last month reported rumors that First Group PLC - operator of British bus and train lines - was considering a $2.8 billion bid for Naperville, Ill.-based Laidlaw, which operates school buses and Greyhound intercity bus lines

Labor unions, particularly the Teamsters, have been critical of the takeover.

The Teamsters were critical of FirstGroup's U.S. subsidiary, First Student, which provides bus service for more than 500 school districts around the country.

Union representatives said the company "failed to provide adequate, timely and safe transportation to students."

Last month, the Ohio attorney general's office said it would work to improve enforcement and oversight of criminal background checks on school bus drivers after First Student discovered that it had not done complete checks on all drivers.

On Jan. 25, public schools in Columbus, Ohio, had to cancel classes to give First Student time to check and see if all drivers had the required background checks.

Under the terms of its bid, Laidlaw would offer beginning drivers a salary of $11 per hour, and guarantee employees who drove both morning and afternoon routes a minimum of 5.5 hours of work per day.

The $11 per hour salary is 10 percent higher than the $10 hourly pay that First Student currently pays news drivers.

But Laidlaw's proposed salary increase is substantially lower than that of Durham School Services, which submitted a $9.2 million bid to provide school bus service here. Although Durham would charge the county substantially less than First Student, it would pay its employees far more: $13 per hour for starting drivers.

Further, Durham representatives said the company would provide Hamilton County with three air conditioned 84-passenger buses that could be used to transport large groups of students on field trips or take band members to concerts -- eliminating the need for schools to hire tour buses for such excursions.

Further, Durham is currently developing a state-of-the-art Smart Buses program aimed at providing school districts with the "best, safest school ride in the business," according to its representative. Consequently, the company is setting up pilot programs in the districts it serves, and would be interested in setting up a pilot program here that would involve equipping every school bus with a GPS tracking system, at no cost to Hamilton County schools.

In other business, school board members heard brief presentations on projected revenues and expenses for the coming school year. Both property and sales tax collections are up, they learned, although not nearly enough to cover the school system's needs.

School board member Janice Boydston said she understands that money is tight, but feels that it's time to get serious about hiring more maintenance workers to take care of school properties.

"It's been the history that whenever we started making cuts . . . we cut roofers, we cut electricians, we cut grounds people, we cut painters," she said.

For example, officials noted, the school system only employs one roofer. If that individual is working on a project and an emergency crops up somewhere else, he has to leave the job he is in the middle of in order to go to the second site.

"Our people just run from emergency to emergency," Ms. Boydston said.