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The mystery, if there was one, will soon be over.

The consultant the Hawaii Department of Education hired to clean up its student transportation services mess has figured out why the cost of busing kids to and from school has skyrocketed in recent years — and what school officials must do to fix the problem.

So what’s the solution? District officials aren’t saying. Yet.

But the message Ray L’Heureux, assistant superintendent for the Office of Facilities and Support Services, delivered this week to the Board of Education was that they finally have a solution to Hawaii’s runaway school bus costs.

He spoke candidly about the huge hurdles the district has yet to clear, but didn’t delve into specifics, which are expected in a report due next month from .

“It’s taken us about seven years to get where we are today and this thing is not going to be fixed overnight,” L’Heureux said. “And some of those fixes, for lack of a better word, are not going to be popular or fun.”

The department agreed to pay the Maryland-based consultant $109,000 to do the comprehensive study and implement solutions. The three-member team, which has experience in 34 states, plans to finalize their report in the next couple weeks then return to Hawaii to present the findings publicly, L’Heureux said.

“The sooner the better,” said Wesley Lo, who chairs the board’s Finance and Infrastructure Committee. “We can’t afford to wait another year.”

Civil Beat has been documenting runaway bus costs in its investigative series, Taken for a Ride. The series reported that competitive bidding suddenly dropped off as transportation costs nearly tripled — to $72.4 million since 2006.

The district in July cut 74 bus routes — impacting some 2,000 kids — to make up part of a $17 million shortfall. State lawmakers again gave the department less money than it had asked for to try to force school officials to crack down on the soaring cost of bus contracts.

The board on Tuesday approved the department’s budget request for an extra $8 million in state general fund money to cover student transportation services in each of the next two years. The district had planned to ask for $10.2 million, but shaved some based on expected savings from the consultant’s recommendations.

With 57 bus contracts coming up for renewal in December, L’Heureux said there will be a great opportunity to toughen up the qualifications. He has said renewals have been more like a “birth right” instead of a heavily scrutinized area for reform.

“I’ve got to either clean the slate of the contracts that we have in place right now or renew them,” he said. “To renew them, doing nothing, means we’re right back to where we were. That can’t happen.”

L’Heureux wouldn’t explain exactly how he planned to attack the contracts because he is still talking to the state about it.

The AG’s was one of several offices the consultant visited independently during the intensive nine-day trip, he said. MPS also spent time with the state auditor, whose office in August released a scathing report of the student transportation program. And the consultant visited key education lawmakers, transportation officers, vendors, board members and department officials.

School officials have different perceptions of what the 54-page audit includes. Some, like board chair Don Horner and L’Heureux, said it mainly identifies problems the district has known about. Others, like Lo, said it goes hand in hand with the consultant’s report.

“Everyone correctly assessed the problem that student transportation had to be fixed and there were some systemic problems especially in the oversight and procurement piece of it,” L’Heureux said. “But the analysis was probably incorrectly assessed, and that’s what (MPS) did expertly.”

He said the consultant was able to identify why student transportation almost doubled in a two-year period and provide more detailed analysis that addresses more than just the managerial oversight.

Without sharing too much of the consultant’s report, which won’t be finished for another couple weeks, L’Heureux said they identified a critical flaw in how the department contracts bus services.

“We’re buying a bus for a route and it stays fairly rigid. If that route flexes or collapses, we do nothing about it but we still pay that fee if we idle that bus. We have not contracted to the requirement,” he said. “In other words, here’s this complex, with this many students, with this many schools starting at this time and this time, this is what my requirement is. And oh by the way, the bus has to meet this capability. And if you can’t meet this capability, don’t bother bidding.

“That’s how this has to work,” L’Heureux said. “We can no longer buy buses for one route and then let the contractors run with that whether it’s a full bus or an empty bus.”

However, he was careful to acknowledge the economic realities bus companies face.

“Fuel is only going to increase. The cost of insurance is only going to increase, and the wage that they have to pay. But that is the cost of doing business,” L’Heureux said. “Those contracts got out of the box, they knew it and we did nothing. We just stayed on the treadmill of just renewing bad practices.”

That’s where the consultant will come in, he said, and highlight the endemic issues in terms of the contracting.

But the reforms that school officials said need to happen go beyond contracting.

Horner identified 36 initiatives the district advanced last year, and a couple major pieces the district hopes to implement soon.

“A lot of people work hard, but sometimes they don’t work smart because they don’t have the tools or the training or the infrastructure or the pay,” he said, calling the compensation “woeful” given some of the jobs’ complexities.

Part of the solution may come from new technology, which the state is in the process of buying, to help manage the roughly 800 buses that run some 200 routes on six islands providing transportation for about 44,000 students.

The consultant’s report is also expected to illuminate the issues in implementing staggered school start times and the state buying its own bus fleet. School officials have said these two initiatives would help cut costs by improving efficiency and stimulating competition.

Lo said the student transportation program has been a thorn in board members’ sides since they were appointed 18 months ago.

“It’s been the same old story,” he said. “There has to be a bias for action now.”

With contracts up for renewal in about 45 days, Lo called it “crunch time.” He said the public, lawmakers and the board are expecting the department to take actions that turn the transportation program around.

“We’re going to look for a little more discipline,” he said, referring to the need for the department to follow through on the plans it lays out.

L’Heureux said timelines will be born out of the consultant’s study and the department is ready to act.

“There’s going to be more fidelity or at least some granularity to what I have to do with the recommendations that come forward after we have this report and absorb it,” he said.

Board members said they’d be willing to hold a special meeting at the consultant’s earliest convenience instead of waiting till Nov. 20 to hear the MPS report.