Bus driver shortage: Districts plead for more support

Another school year is in the midst of kicking off, but the shortage of bus drivers remains a significant challenge for many districts across the nation.

With fewer people available to transport students, the ongoing issue not only hinders logistics networks but places undue stress on families.

Some districts are forcing drivers to double up their drives and others find themselves having to prioritize yellow bus transportation for their most vulnerable students.

The problem isn’t new, yet educators are still waiting for solutions.

According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), approximately 192,400 bus drivers were working in K–12 schools in September 2023, down 15.1% from September 2019. The employment for state and local government school bus drivers has fallen 13.6% over the same period, according to EPI data. Meanwhile, private school bus driver employment has declined 21.5%.

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“Educators and parents depend on drivers every day to provide kids safe transportation, including students with special needs. Without them, schools around the country simply wouldn’t run,” National Education Association President Becky Pringle told FOX Business.

The issue is that transportation staff have been “severely underpaid” for far too long. They also often work without benefits, “making it nearly impossible to recruit and retain staff in these positions,” according to Pringle.

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Florida’s Hillsborough County School District, the seventh-largest school district in the nation, is just one of many that have been struggling to find enough drivers this year.

The public school district transports 78,000 students each day to and from school, and while it was able to hire more than 100 drivers over the summer, it’s still in need of 150 more, Tanya Arja, chief of communications for the district, said.

“One of our issues we are facing is we cannot pay our drivers and other staff as much as neighboring districts. Nearly all of our surrounding districts have an additional millage increase that voters approved. So they have more funding for salaries,” Arja said, adding that the district is going for a millage increase on the November ballot.

“We have to be able to compete with salaries, so our students can get to school on time and not miss instruction,” Arja said.

For now, to accommodate for the shortage, some drivers in the district are forced to do double runs to pick up students.

Jude Bruno, president of the Florida PTA, the largest volunteer child advocacy association in the nation, said the shortages felt nationwide were “further compounded by the pandemic,” and will continue to be a concern if wages aren’t increased.

“Like most school positions, without higher wages that account for inflation and the cost of living for qualified bus drivers and other education professionals, this will continue to be a concern in our schools,” Bruno said.

In Illinois, a Chicago Public Schools (CPS) spokesperson told FOX Business that it is facing similar pressures.

With the ongoing shortage, CPS has had “to prioritize yellow bus transportation for our most vulnerable students – our qualifying students with disabilities and Students in Temporary Living Situations (STLS), two demographic groups that are also both growing in size,” the spokesperson said.

CPS has already seen a 22% uptick in the number of students who will be transported on yellow buses on the first day of school this year compared with a year ago.

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“As a District, we remain determined to resolve the impact of this bus driver shortage and have employed many strategies to address it, from increased driver wages to ongoing advocacy for reasonable state testing and certification requirements,” the district said.

CPS approved a second increase in bus driver incentives and a $1,000 retention bonus was issued to certain drivers.

Zach Harig, spokesperson for Hamilton Community Schools in Michigan, said that due to the shortage, educators including the current Hamilton High School principal, a retired principal and a 30-year veteran Hamilton teacher received their commercial driver’s license to “keep our buses running smoothly.”

“It’s a team effort in our district, and we are thankful to have so many people that fill many different vital needs and roles,” Harig said.

However, Pringle is pleading for help from leaders nationwide “to provide long-term solutions to fix long-term problems.” This “starts with paying bus drivers like the professionals they are so they can serve students safely and reliably,” she added.

Bruno reiterated that “innovative solutions to the problem can’t just be short-term or shortchange students; they have to be long-term, and that’s why we must continue to advocate for our schools to be fully funded.”