When Mountain View Elementary on Hawaii Island began classes Monday, Aug. 5, Sherrie Galdeira was on the road with her son by 6:15 a.m. The Hawaii Department of Education had canceled school bus services for thousands of students just days before, and Galdeira was worried about fighting traffic with other parents who needed to drop off their children before the workday began. 

By that Friday, Galdeira was exhausted and frustrated with the time and costs of taking her son to school. DOE offers mileage reimbursement for families driving to campus, but completing the paperwork wasn’t worth the small amount of money she’d receive in exchange, Galdeira said. 

To save on gas money, Galdeira kept her son home from school that day.

“My whole concern is, number one, effective communication from the DOE and the government,” Galdeira said. “They have to have known that this was coming.” 

DOE restored bus routes for 23 schools, including Mountain View, on Monday, but 113 routes remain canceled for students on Oahu, the Big Island and Maui. This marks the  that DOE has made last-minute cancellations to its bus services for nearly 30,000 students. 

Frustrated families and lawmakers are now demanding accountability from DOE and its contractor, Ground Transport Inc., which started the year unable to fill 147 of its routes. Ground Transport received the bulk of DOE’s bus contracts earlier this year and serves 10 of the 16 school complexes.

So far, the company has been able to restore five of its routes since the start of the school year. Ground Transport did not respond to requests for comment. 

DOE has consolidated and canceled routes dating , and driver shortages have only worsened since the pandemic. Some lawmakers and others say Hawaii should reconsider the way it contracts out to bus companies – or if schools should be relying on private vendors at all. 

“That’s the first hurdle in learning,” Rep. Amy Perruso said about the canceled routes. Perruso has previously  that would allow DOE to own its own buses and provide transportation services to students.   

DOE doesn’t have a timeline for restoring all of its routes, although Deputy Superintendent Randy Moore hopes all students will have access to bus transportation by the time the first quarter ends in early October. 

Fewer Companies, Fewer Drivers 

When DOE began a new round of bus contracts in July, the  went to two companies – Roberts Hawaii and Ground Transport. A third company received routes for a single complex on Kauai. 

Now, families and community members are questioning DOE’s decision to give Ground Transport so much responsibility for serving Hawaii schools. According to , Ground Transport took on 91 new schools and expanded its services to the Big Island for the first time this year. 

Changes to the state’s contracting process, along with a steady decline in bus drivers, may explain DOE’s difficulties. 

Around 2014, DOE revised its contracting process to drive down  and make bus routes more efficient, said Ray L’Heureux, who served as an assistant superintendent from 2012 to 2015. Instead of allowing bus companies to serve individual campuses, DOE asked vendors to bid on packages that grouped together multiple routes and schools. 

The change required owners to serve more students and neighborhoods for several years at a time and made it harder for smaller companies to compete with statewide providers, who had huge fleets and hundreds of employees, said Cassie Akina-Ancog, general manager of Akina Tours & Transportation on Maui. Akina lost its bid to serve Maui schools in 2017 and hasn’t contracted with DOE since. 

As smaller bus companies are pushed out of business, states may see a decline in their driver workforce, said Curt Macysyn, executive director of the National School Transportation Association. Long-time drivers may be unwilling to stay in the school bus business after their local company closes, he added. 

It’s also difficult for small providers to survive when there’s so few drivers available in the state, said John Scovel, who formerly served as the general manager of Iosepa Transportation. A wave of workers retired during the Covid-19 pandemic, and it’s difficult for new employees to earn their specialized bus driver licenses and survive on jobs that only offer them a few hours of pay in the early mornings and afternoons, Scovel said. 

“It’s a struggle because the cost versus the profit margin isn’t there,” Scovel said. Iosepa Transportation served Big Island schools until DOE chose not to extend its contract earlier this year. 

What Happened? 

DOE knew well before the start of school that Ground Transport was coming up short on employees. Companies need to submit a roster of their drivers 45 days before the new school year begins and complete a dry run of their routes over a week before classes start. 

Moore said the department followed these procedures but believed Ground Transport would be able to hire more employees by the end of summer vacation. He said he wasn’t notified until late July that Ground Transport would be unable to fulfill more than 100 of its routes beginning Aug. 5. 

To fill the gaps, Roberts Hawaii has entered into weekly contracts with DOE to restore nearly 30 routes that were originally assigned to Ground Transport. Moore said he’s unsure how much the department is paying Roberts for these services, but emphasized that Ground Transport is not receiving payment for the routes it isn’t covering.

Instead, he said, the unused money is going toward other transportation initiatives, like reimbursing parents for mileage or covering the cost of county bus passes for high school students. 

Lawmakers have questioned why Ground Transport should keep its seven-year contract moving forward. The state will spend $85 million on school bus contracts for the 2024-25 academic year.  

Up until this year, Roberts Hawaii covered some of the routes on Big Island, Oahu and Maui that Ground Transport is currently unable to serve, said JoAnn Erban, Roberts’ vice president of sales and marketing. The company has sufficient bus drivers and would be willing to take on more routes for the rest of the school year, Erban said.

When lawmakers pressed school leaders at a hearing Thursday on why they awarded so many contracts to Ground Transport earlier this year, Moore said DOE doesn’t necessarily award routes to the contractor with the lowest prices. Instead, the department places a heavy emphasis on other factors like a company’s safety procedures, its future plans to use zero-emission buses and its efforts to recruit and retain drivers.

But Erban said she believes DOE needs to place a greater consideration on a company’s track record of serving students. Roberts consistently covered 94% of its routes last year, she said, and has school buses and base yards throughout the state.  

“At the end of the day, it’s up to them to make the changes,” Erban said about DOE’s approach to contracts. 

Solutions On The Horizon 

Moore told legislators the department’s focus is on restoring routes as quickly as possible. From there, he said, school leaders will start looking at future improvements.

For example, Moore said, DOE is considering staggering school start times so fewer drivers can cover more routes before classes start. Additionally, the department could potentially hire drivers as part-time cafeteria workers or custodians during the school day to provide them more steady employment, he said. 

Perruso said the state could also look beyond private services for possible long-term answers. 

On the mainland, some school districts have their own fleet of vehicles and run their own bus services. If Hawaii took a similar approach, Perruso said, DOE wouldn’t face the uncertainty of relying on outside contractors. It would also be easier for the department to hire employees who could split their time driving buses and working on campus, although the state could face a large upfront cost in purchasing its own school buses.  

“We definitely need to be thinking about transition, because the status quo isn’t working,” Perruso said.

This was originally published on .

Virginia’s school bus driver vacancy rate has decreased by five percent over the past three school years, according to the Virginia Department of Education.

After the legislature amended its reporting requirements, the agency started collecting bus driver vacancy data two years ago. Factors like pay and recruitment challenges, and drivers leaving for the private sector, led to the shortage of drivers.

In addition, schools were closed to in-person leaving some drivers to find other ways to meet the increased cost of services and goods due to inflation that burdened families in Virginia.

During the 2021-22 school year, Virginia recorded a vacancy rate of full- and part-time drivers at 16% in 2021-22. The rate decreased to 11% in 2022-23 and last year to 10%. Data on the upcoming school year ‘s driver vacancy rates will not be available until the fall.

“It’s good news,” said Scott Brabrand, the executive director of the Virginia Association of School Superintendents.

He said superintendents around the commonwealth have been working to address the shortage by offering bonuses and increasing bus driver salaries.

Schools in Virginia found other unique ways of transporting students amid the bus driver shortage, such as altering routes, placing more students on buses, and using car and van services. Some communities created programs to promote to school.

The state legislature has also attempted to address the shortage in recent years.

Last year, the General Assembly agreed to legislation carried by Del. , R-Chesterfield, and Sen., D-Portsmouth, to shorten the time period during which retired drivers with at least 25 years of service could return to work without jeopardizing their pension benefits.

In another measure, Sen. , R-Abington, and Del. , R-Washington, raised awareness of the retirement benefits for teachers who drive buses. Following the session earlier this year, the Virginia Retirement System clarified that qualifying teachers who drive buses would receive compensation when they retire.

According to the agency’s , VRS-participating school divisions may combine the job duties of two positions under one contract as long as one of the positions is a covered position.

“It is a huge benefit to teachers,” Washington County Public Schools Superintendent Keith Perrigan said.

Experts have said that transportation is one key to keeping children in school, limiting a high number of absences, and addressing the learning loss exacerbated during the pandemic.

Perrigan, who serves on the state’s to address absences, said a few school divisions he represents in the Coalition of Small and Rural Schools of Virginia will start the school year fully staffed with drivers, unlike previous years.

“Much of rural Virginia, especially Southwest Virginia, is seeing progress in this area. Although we still have some work to do, we are breathing a little easier with the bus driver shortage,” Perrigan said.

According to Perrigan, seven teachers in Washington County will split their time teaching and driving students, and more than 20 will do the same in Buchanan County.

Last year, Rappahannock County faced a shortage of drivers. However, according to Shannon Grimsley, superintendent of Rappahannock schools, the school division is fully staffed with drivers and has substitute drivers available.

This comes after Grimsley became a part-time school bus driver to alleviate transportation barriers for students and encourage others to become drivers. The division’s focus now is covering the costs of replacing aging buses, another transportation challenge some districts face.

“We are creatively working with the county government on our bus replacement schedule to ensure our fleet is in proper order and meeting all guidelines for optimum operability,” Grimsley said.

Grimsely said the costs of buses have significantly increased and the impact on rural school districts with limited state funding can be a challenge. She said the costs of buses in her district have increased by more than 63% over the past five years.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Samantha Willis for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on and .

Statewide, Oklahoma public schools are experiencing a shortage of bus drivers — and they’re struggling to adapt.

School districts of all sizes are having to get creative with their responses. Coweta Public Schools has had to keep students waiting to be picked up or taken home until other routes finish. Covington-Douglas Public Schools and Clinton Public Schools pay $35 an hour, and both have had positions open since before this school year.

Guthrie Public Schools has to pay overtime to their drivers for after-school events. Beggs Public Schools has had to combine routes, resulting in some that are more than two hours long.

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StateImpact analyzed every public school district in Oklahoma and found that of the 400-plus schools with hiring listings accessible on their websites or that answered a superintendent survey, over 40% showed open driver positions. About a quarter of the 80 surveyed superintendents said they or other school administrators drive a bus.

Sentinel Public Schools superintendent Jason Goostree is one of those. Sentinel is a small, rural district in western Oklahoma, about 120 miles from Oklahoma City. Most days, Goostree drives routes to and from school. He said he didn’t expect to drive buses as a superintendent and doesn’t think it will end anytime soon.

“It’s one of those things where you feel like you’re responsible for everything that happens in the district,” Goostree said. “So it’s kind of, if this is what needs to happen to make sure things go smoothly, then that’s what you’re doing.”

He recently met with his staff and rolled out a pitch for more field trip drivers. Being so far from a city center means it’s a non-starter for Sentinel to recruit drivers who don’t already work for the district or from the church across the street. A few teachers have their bus driving licenses, but he said it’s unfair to them and their students to pull them from their classrooms.

“If we have a field trip… you can’t start yanking people out of their jobs all the time,” Goostree said. “So I got one person, for sure, out of that meeting that said she’s going to do it, and I’m working on a second. My goal was three, but if I can get two more people by the beginning of next year, that will help quite a bit.”

While rural schools find unique challenges with recruitment, larger schools are also feeling the pinch.

Despite a recent staff pay boost, yearly step raises and district-provided benefits like health insurance, Stillwater Public Schools had to cancel all out-of-town field trips for the rest of the school year because it didn’t have enough drivers. Assistant Superintendent of Operations Bo Gamble said they still have six to eight positions open.

“Trying to balance getting students where they need to be for curricular needs and wants, there’s just a trade-off that you have to make,” Gamble said. “Not having the capacity to manage all of the trips — we had to make a decision on which trips needed to be focused on.”

Gamble said field trips during the school day are especially difficult if the bus doesn’t leave and return in the window between morning and afternoon routes. He said it’s slowly improving since COVID hit, but the local workforce pool isn’t back to normal.

“In my opinion, specifically in Oklahoma … we’ve lost a lot of our workforce to [cannabis] grow farms. There’s a large capacity for that workforce. And I think everybody’s being impacted by [a workforce shortage],” Gamble said. “With COVID, it was just kind of a perfect storm. … We’re starting to come back from it … but we still need people.”

When drivers aren’t there, teachers step in

Activity sponsors — like band directors and coaches — are also getting behind the wheel. Surveyed schools had varying policies about paying these teachers more to drive their students to contests and games — Stillwater, for example, pays them an hourly rate. Nearly all surveyed schools, though, require or strongly encourage their activity sponsors to get bus driving licenses.

But adding hours of driving onto an already taxing day for coaches and directors can present safety concerns.

Hunter Hanna was a band director at Valliant Public Schools in southeastern Oklahoma. After a full day of classes in the fall, he would drive his students to and from football games several hours away and contests the next day that lasted all day.

“Those little side things on the highways that err when you hit them? Yeah, those are definitely much-needed,” Hanna said.

He said he’s been so tired driving back late at night that he makes wrong turns, which adds more time to the trips. Mid-trip stops were a must — he said he had to get some fresh air and stretch his legs to stay awake.

“Highway hypnosis is one of the things they talk about in bus driver training because, I mean, seeing all these dark roads and just nothing on them… it was pretty bad,” Hanna said.

Before getting his bus driving license, Hanna had to coordinate a patchwork of vehicles to get his band students to activities. There was a minibus that didn’t require specific licensure, a school vehicle and parents driving their personal minivans. To avoid having to finagle that, he made the call to get his license.

Hanna’s district didn’t require him to, and it paid for training and testing. Band director Whitney Callen’s district, Newcastle Public Schools, also doesn’t require activity sponsors to get bus driving licenses, though she said she was asked in her interview if she would. Several band directors and coaches who spoke to StateImpact for this story reported the same.

“I explained that at my previous district, it was not an expectation because our head director was very clear about — his staff would not drive because of the amount of hours that we worked as band directors,” Callen said. “And they seemed a little bit put off by that.”

She said she agreed to get her license — on the stipulation that she would not drive on especially long days.

“And they were like, ‘Oh, for sure. We definitely always get drivers for our directors if it’s a long weekend,’” Callen said.

Callen experienced unexpected medical issues that kept her from getting her license this year, but she watched the head band director drive those especially long days the district had said it would prioritize finding drivers for. Her colleague downs energy drinks and has asked her to sit behind him and talk to him so he stays awake.

“The school district did not follow through on that. And so when I saw that, I was like, yeah, I’m not getting my CDL because this is not a safe environment for students or me. I shouldn’t have that pressure,” Callen said. “So it does make me feel guilty, but at the same time, it makes me feel confused — why is this even something that we put on people or ask them to do?”

As the shortage of drivers persists, districts are filling in the gaps with teachers like Hanna and administrators like Goostree. They’re also upping pay, canceling trips, packing buses, doubling up routes and staggering start times.

Bo Gamble at Stillwater Public Schools said he thinks they can get staffing levels back up before the start of the new school year. The district advertises, holds hiring events and provides incentives for current employees. And true to form, he made a final pitch at the end of his interview:

“If you know anybody, we’re still hiring. We need drivers,” Gamble said. “I may be a little bit biased, but I think Stillwater Public Schools is a great place to work — Stillwater’s a great place to be.”

This  was originally published by . StateImpact Oklahoma is a partnership of Oklahoma’s public radio stations which relies on contributions from readers and listeners to fulfill its mission of public service to Oklahoma and beyond.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com. Follow Oklahoma Voice on and .

Rep. Pat Heinert says North Dakota should think about throwing some federal driver’s licensing requirements under the bus.

“I’ve come up with the wild idea of creating a bus driver’s license for North Dakota,” Heinert said during a school funding committee meeting on Nov. 28.

Maybe it’s not so crazy. Maybe it is.

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Mike Heilman, executive director of the , said his group and others have been looking into waivers for parts of the federal commercial driver’s license requirements that bus drivers are required to have.

Specifically, the state may be able to waive the “under-the-hood” requirement as part of the CDL training.

“There are several states that have an under-the-hood exemption,” Heilman told the committee on Nov. 28.

Part of the pre-bus inspection requires knowing how to spot potential problems with the engine.

“The mechanic needs to know this but not necessarily the bus driver,” Heilman said.

Brad Schaffer, driver license director for the North Dakota Department of Transportation, says that yes, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which sets the rules for CDL requirements, does allow states to grant the “under the hood” exemption. But he said his department has decided against the move.

He said that someone obtaining a Class B CDL with the waiver would limit their driving:

They would only be able to drive a school bus, preventing them from driving a bus for another purpose, such as for a church group.It would mean they couldn’t drive across state lines.

He said there also is a possibility that the federal agency could decide to discontinue the waivers, forcing drivers to start over.

Schaffer said his department looked at other states that offer under-the-hood waiver and didn’t see much benefit.

Schaffer said the department can grant individual requests for under-the-hood waivers, but when potential CDL drivers learn about the restrictions, they back off. The department has not issued any such waivers this year.

He also said he didn’t think there would be a significant time savings on training with the waiver.

Other options?

Could there be other ways to create a light version of the CDL?

Levi Bachmeier, business manager for West Fargo Public Schools and a former policy adviser to Gov. Doug Burgum, said ideas are worth exploring.

Making it easier to get a CDL is one strategy to address the bus driver shortage in North Dakota and around the country.

A national survey on school busing released in 2021 showed 51% of respondents described their driver shortage as “severe” or “desperate;” and 78% indicated that the driver shortage is getting “much worse” or “a little worse.”

That has forced school districts to rethink transportation routes and services.

Alexis Baxley, executive director of the , said districts of all sizes are struggling to fill driving spots.

In Bismarck, she said drivers are having to drive two routes. The Northern Cass School District had to temporarily drop rural service this fall, offering only in-town pickup.

Other options include dropping door-to-door service, instead creating bus stops, and running longer routes. Baxley said longer routes can be especially hard on young students.

“Getting them to school is the most important thing,” Baxley said.

She said her group and the Small Organized Schools want to gather data.

“In order to identify a solution, we feel that we need to dig in and get some really hard data, something more than anecdotal, and see if we can really identify perhaps the biggest barriers to recruitment or the biggest barriers in the licensure process,” Baxley said.

Added safety requirement, fewer tests

The feds in February actually added a safety training requirement, though Schaffer said anyone who has held a CDL for two or more years qualifies as a trainer, and there is no time requirement.

Still, North Dakota has administered fewer CDL tests in 2023 than in years past.

As of Dec. 5, the state had given about 2,000 CDLs, on pace for between 2,200 and 2,300 for the year.

That’s behind 2022’s 3,000 tests and 2,700 in 2021.

Competition with industry

Bachmeier said West Fargo has covered most of the cost for drivers to obtain a CDL but that has been abused by drivers leaving for higher-paying jobs in private industry.

Heinert, a Republican from Bismarck and a former sheriff, admitted that a North Dakota-specific license may not be practical with the federal regulations that exist.

But Bachmeier agreed with Heinert that a lower training standard would help address the problem.

“If we can find a way to lower the training barriers, we can find a way to lower our competition with private providers that are always going to always out-compete us on a wage perspective, we may be able to affect some of the supply and demand issues that we have with bus drivers.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. North Dakota Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Amy Dalrymple for questions: info@northdakotamonitor.com. Follow North Dakota Monitor on and .

Belinda Rodriguez depends on Milwaukee Public Schools busing contractors to transport her grandchildren to and from school. That poses problems. The bus sometimes arrives late to drive her 6-year-old granddaughter, Magaly Coronado, to her South Side Milwaukee school, or deliver her home.

That tardiness leaves Rodriguez anxious about the child’s whereabouts and wondering why one grandchild gets picked up and not the other, even though they ride the same route and live less than two miles apart.

“This is not good because sometimes we don’t have gas money or a car to take her to school,” Rodriguez texted to Wisconsin Watch in February — part of a series of messages documenting spotty bus service to her household.

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Coronado’s bus driver has been late again this school year, including during a day Wisconsin Watch visited her bus stop in October.

School districts and have faced a years-long bus driver shortage, which the COVID-19 pandemic worsened. Bus delays and cancellations during the return to in-person learning in 2021 left many students late daily and even prompted families to consider switching schools.

Responding to the problem, the district eliminated hundreds of routes, added to drivers’ workloads and launched efforts to compensate families for the hassle of finding alternative transportation.

This included mailing reimbursement contracts to a small subset of households that faced the most severe busing problems. The school board separately allocated $500,000 in federal pandemic relief — tapping the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) — to compensate parents for transportation costs.

But school district officials left families largely in the dark about how to collect compensation, Wisconsin Watch found. Budget documents show the district did not spend the $500,000 it allocated, and officials say the district halted the parent contract program at the end of December 2021 after disbursing just over $8,200 to 124 households in a district that serves about 67,500 students.

The district says it fixed its driver shortage, eliminating the need for compensation. Parents disagree and said they could still use compensation for transportation inconveniences.

Busing reliability has improved over the past two years, parents told Wisconsin Watch through its with Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service. But drivers sometimes still show up late. Parents on those days must drive their children to school or keep them home due to a lack of transportation.

“When I think about myself and in getting my daughter to school, a lot of times we don’t rely on the bus because she was always getting to school late,” said Milwaukee Public Schools parent Sharlen Moore, adding that being reimbursed monthly for gas would be helpful.

Driver shortage leaves students waiting

Shiela Cusack of Milwaukee’s South Side remembers many days during the 2021-22 school year when drivers for Wisconsin Central School Bus, one district contractor, failed to pick up her daughter and take her across town to Milwaukee High School of the Arts.

During one of her multiple calls to the company, she was encouraged to apply for a bus driver position. She wasn’t interested.

Milwaukee Public Schools saw driver shortages that school year ranging from 30 to 70 drivers due to COVID-19 sickness or those who quit due to pandemic concerns, according to David Solik-Fifarek, senior director of business and transportation services. He described the disruption as brief.

“There were just some days where students were not getting picked up. Three days later, they were getting picked up again,” Solik-Fifarek said.

Buses failed to pick up at least 700 students on time or at all for the first day back for 40 of the district’s roughly 150 schools following the pandemic shutdown, the reported in October 2021.

The crisis prompted district officials to cut 600 routes, remove about 200 buses from service, increase driver routes from two to three and recruit more drivers.

Few compensation contracts returned

But those strategies didn’t immediately solve the problem as the district waited for new drivers to complete training.

The district sought to compensate the most affected families by mailing reimbursement contracts to about 1,000 households monthly between November and December 2021 where buses didn’t show up for multiple days in a row, Solik-Fifarek said.

School board directors Megan O’Halloran and Sequanna Taylor (who is now a county supervisor) additionally saw opportunity in the district’s $506 million final round of ESSER funding. The board unanimously approved their proposal to allocate $500,000 of the pandemic aid to reimburse families for bus passes, gas and mileage.

“Perhaps this a redundant amendment, and we already have plans,” O’Halloran said during an October 2021 budget meeting.

Local reported on the compensation vote, but the school district did not tell parents how to access the funds.

“I don’t think we did a great job with informing parents about that benefit,” said Aisha Carr, another school board director.

By the time the district mailed out the contracts, 124 of which were returned, 95% of bus routes were running on any given day, Solik-Fifarek said. The majority of contracts went unreturned for a variety of likely reasons, he added, including that the family had switched addresses, switched schools, didn’t get their mail or decided they didn’t need the small stipend.

The district had enough drivers in the pipeline by mid-December to further stabilize the busing system, allowing officials to end the compensation program, according to Solik-Fifarek.

“That was a very short-lived program,” he said.

The district did not spend the additional $500,000 it allocated for transportation stipends, according to a submitted to the school board directors. The document, an update on ESSER spending, proposed removing the stipend allocation in a budget revision.

“I think that’s extremely unfair,” Cusack said.

District officials did not answer Wisconsin Watch’s questions about whether the funds were reallocated for another purpose.

Wisconsin Watch asked school board president Marva Herndon and board member Henry Leonard about how the district spent the money. Herndon told a reporter to submit a public records request, and Leonard said he didn’t know where the money would have gone. Wisconsin Watch is waiting on the district to fulfill that request.

Bus route changes are a challenge

Some residents say the requirement that drivers work a third route has kept the system moving slowly.

“If (drivers) get a hiccup on their first or second route, it’s going to impact everything else that comes after it,” Moore said.

Heather Peña, whose sixth and seventh grade daughters rely on the bus, said late buses were a particular problem during colder temperatures.

In February Peña lacked a car, causing the children to miss school one day when the bus was late.

“I wasn’t going to have them waiting outside for a half an hour for a bus that was going to show up late and have them freeze their butts off,” she said.

Cusack’s daughter was often late to her first class due to unreliable bus service in February, the mother said.

“There’s still days where I have to take my daughter to school. She doesn’t even know if the bus is coming,” Cusack told Wisconsin Watch.

Adding an additional route to drivers’ schedules and offering them longer hours largely works, but it can create a time crunch, Solik-Fifarek acknowledged. He added any change to previous routines can create challenges.

“You set these routes up and then all of a sudden you add another kid, another kid, and another kid and before you know it, the route is running 20 minutes longer than it was a month ago,” he said. “And then it requires some fixing.”

Some drivers remain frustrated that the extra demands make staying on time more difficult, particularly when bad traffic or weather strikes, said Farina Brooks, a longtime bus driver and community leader.

Brooks’ first daily route starts on Milwaukee’s West Side. She then serves the Far Northwest Side. Her third route covers the East Side, she said.

In the early months of the busing overhaul Brooks would show parents her far-reaching duties on a map to assure them she wasn’t late on purpose.

“We have a heart. Most of us have children, and we understand that these babies have to stand out here. It’s not like we want them to, but there’s only so much we can do,” Brooks said. “We have to run the route the way it is and the way the times are set up. It’s frustrating to us because there’s nothing we can do.”

Information for parents

Milwaukee Public Schools contracts with a variety of busing companies to serve students. Those needing to report a busing issue can find phone numbers . Parents can separately contact the district’s transportation office by calling 414-475-8922 or emailing tran@milwaukee.k12.wi.us.

The nonprofit Wisconsin Watch () collaborates with Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, WPR, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Nicole Haynes is exasperated by excuses from the Sheridan School District.

A parent of two children in the district, Haynes lives in daily uncertainty. She never knows if the school bus her children ride will run on schedule. She sometimes receives an automated text alerting her at the last minute that the bus may be very late in the morning or afternoon. Occasionally no text arrives at all and neither does the bus. Her children may be left standing on the road with no way to get to school. It has happened more times than she can count.

A nurse in Little Rock, Haynes often has to leave work unexpectedly to get her children to make sure they are safe after school. Sheridan, a city of 5,124, is about 35 minutes south of Little Rock. Haynes especially worries about her son who has special needs and shouldn’t be left at the bus stop.

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“There’s no one but my husband and I to get our children,” she said. “It’s like the school district doesn’t care, and they don’t want to deal with the problem.”

Haynes isn’t alone.

Sheridan parents are dismayed with the school board’s apparent failure to address bus complaints: late buses, a flawed text alert system, broken-down buses and an ongoing bus driver shortage. Some students don’t arrive home until after 6 p.m.

“It’s too long of a day for these kids, and some kids are left home alone and missing school,” Haynes said.

School district spokesman Andy Mayberry and Superintendent Dr. Karla Neathery say the administration is addressing concerns.

“We understand parents’ frustrations and are working diligently to do all we can to address these issues,” said Neathery. “School districts across the state and nation are experiencing bus driver shortages which cause delayed buses, and that’s no different for us.

“However, we plan to present the district’s board of education a plan tonight [May 8, 2023] that we believe may help us recruit additional drivers, and we’ll continue to utilize various methods to reach out to potential new drivers. We also will be working over the summer to migrate to a different method of accessing data for our transportation’s text alert system that we hope will alleviate communication issues.”

Still, a group of parents and citizens have launched a campaign to collect 50 registered voters’ signatures on a petition calling for a special school board meeting to address the transportation and other issues without having to seek approval as an agenda item in a regular school board meeting.

“I am gathering information now on several issues,” said Glenn Strong, Sr., a grandparent. “Hopefully we can hit them the first of June.”

Parents and citizens can sign up to address the board at regular monthly meetings only on agenda items. A person wouldn’t be allowed to speak, say, about a bus issue unless they submitted a written request to be on the agenda seven days in advance.

“The written request must be sufficiently descriptive to enable the Superintendent and Board President to fully understand and evaluate its appropriateness to be an agenda item. Such requests may be accepted, rejected, or referred back to the individual for further clarification,” the board manual states.

An examination of all Sheridan School Board agendas on the school’s website for the 2022-23 school year shows the topic of buses has not been listed on any of them.

Members of the seven-member school board did not respond to questions for this story.

“They want you to stay quiet,” said Haynes, who has called the school numerous times about her children’s bus. “Just sweep it all under the rug. A lot of people are scared to speak.”

Bus drivers are. No driver was willing to talk on the record for this story for fear of retaliation by the school’s administration.

Widespread shortages

In 2021-22, many school districts throughout Arkansas faced a bus driver shortage because of the pandemic. Shortages still exist in some districts but aren’t as severe as two years ago. For example, in the Cleveland County School District, as in other small districts, the superintendent drives a bus when necessary.

Sheridan’s bus situation appears particularly critical because problems existed long before covid, according to documents obtained through the state Freedom of Information Act. Parents fear the transportation system of “YJ (Yellowjacket) Nation” — as it’s often called — is now failing on all fronts.

Christina Hoffman, another parent who has been vocal about the district’s problems, provided text messages that show the uncertainty parents face daily if they depend on buses.

One recent text from the district said: “Bus #4 will not run morning or afternoon the rest of this week. We are sorry for this inconvenience. Thank you for your patience during this driver shortage. If you know of anyone that is willing to come drive a bus, please send them our way. Please help spread the word to those that may not have signed up in the Transportation Department for texts about their bus.”

“The texts are every day, just about,” Hoffman said. “The administration gets hit hard once a month [at board meetings], people get out their complaints and buses get back on track. Then it goes right back to the way it was.”

Low pay, unruly students and run-down buses are a few reasons drivers don’t want the job. Students tell their parents that holes in bus ceilings are patched with duct tape and bus parts have flown off while traveling, Haynes and Hoffman said.

Most of the district’s 56 buses were purchased in the last 10 years. The oldest buses, bought in 2000, are used as spares.

The responsibility of driving students on winding two-lane country roads adds more stress for drivers, compounded by occasionally driving double routes. Overcrowded buses are another concern.

In turn, parents blame the drivers, bashing them publicly on social media. Drivers said they are doing all they can in a tough situation. One driver who did not want to be identified said the job is “thankless.”

Recruitment problems

Since 2019, more than 30 Sheridan district bus drivers have resigned or retired, according to district documents obtained in mid-April.

In March, two bus drivers and the bus transportation coordinator resigned effective at the end of the school year. At the start of this school year, the district had 27 drivers under contract for 34 routes.

The district covers parts of two counties — Grant and Saline — including the Saline county community of East End, 18 miles from Little Rock. District buses cover 622 square miles twice a day and transport 1,800+ students, according to a Feb. 22, 2023, post on the district’s Facebook page.

Other communities in the district are Hensley, Redfield, Center Grove, Grapevine, Leola and Prattsville, among others.

Documents show email chains, dating from 2016 to 2023, discussing ways to hire, and retain, more drivers.

In a 2021 email, Dennis Emerson, director of administrative services for the Sheridan district, wrote to the Bryant Public Schools director of transportation, asking for “some creative ways to recruit bus drivers.”

Competition is now stiffer than ever for drivers, who need a commercial license (CDL) and must pass myriad tests and background checks. In Sheridan, drivers also have to pay for their own Arkansas State Police, FBI and Department of Human Services child maltreatment background checks, which cost $49.75.

CDL drivers can make more money working for private companies than the public education system. But Mayberry said the district isn’t competing with those types of jobs.

“The position of school bus driver is intended to be part-time, typically working three to four hours per day during the school year, so we’re not really competing with businesses that employ full-time drivers,” Mayberry told the Arkansas Advocate in an email.

“Traditionally, most school bus drivers live in the district or close by. We will continue to market the position internally to both classified and certified staff as well as target audiences including those who may seek a retirement income or want to supplement income from another job. There are a number of other benefits that we’ll continue to promote, including retirement savings and health insurance that a potential bus driver might not have otherwise. We’ll continue to try creative means of marketing the position through social media, videos, etc.”

Some school districts — like Pine Bluff, which is under state control with a limited-authority board — have upped the ante to lure bus drivers away from surrounding areas like Sheridan with a starting pay of $23,000 for five hours a day with benefits. The district considers the job full-time.

By comparison, Sheridan’s starting bus driver pay is $10,548 for three to 3 1/2 hours a day, including public school health insurance, according to a district Facebook post on Aug. 24, 2022.

“As part of an ongoing process to be competitive, the Sheridan School District monitors and reviews pay scales of surrounding and similar districts to our own,” Mayberry told the Advocate. “We plan to make necessary adjustments where needed to stay competitive within the fiscal means of our district.”

A new voice

Chris Connelly and his family moved from New York to Sheridan in 2019. He wanted escape from big-city chaos and a calming place with small-town values.

Soon after his move, however, he realized the Sheridan School District had problems, especially in his opinion with leadership. Connelly wanted to make a difference and decided to run for a school board position in 2022. He offered novel ideas for improving schools but lost to hometown favorite and former YellowJacket football player Stan Hancock 36.7% to 63.3%. Both men reside in East End.

Connelly has practical worries about the bus situation, but also an overall concern about the district as it attempts to address the bus crisis before the school year ends

“It’s clear there is mismanagement on behalf of the district and the school board,” Connelly said.

“Based on the fundamental priority of schools being publicly funded under the Department of Education and their primary function of securing education, logistical challenges should be at the forefront of their priorities.

“Instead, the public has only gotten excuses against the backdrop of the real priorities the board has set forth and they have no problem accomplishing – six-figure salaries for coaches, brand new football fields and the list goes on. They can figure that out but they can’t figure out a staffing shortage?”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com. Follow Arkansas Advocate on and .

East Texas towns come to life on fall Friday nights when fans decked out in school colors fill stadiums to cheer on their high school football team. Marching bands, cheerleaders and drill teams ignite competitive spirits when decades-old rivalries kick off.

So when a shortage of bus drivers prevented Nacogdoches High School from transporting those student groups to an away football game in Titus County this month, the town was disheartened.

“The atmosphere is really not the same without the band and drill team there, playing and making noise for the team,” said Adrian Belista, a junior at Nacogdoches High and drum major for the band. “It was kind of like a missing piece.”

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Belista and his 205 band mates ended up putting on a performance at their home Dragon Stadium that mid-October Friday night while the football team played their game at Mount Pleasant — about a two-and-a half-hour bus trip — without their usual fandom or their pre-game fight song.

Across the state, school districts are improvising amid a national shortage of bus drivers. The issue is not new, school district officials said, but it has been exacerbated over the past few months by a , fueled by such factors as the COVID-19 pandemic, child care challenges and a slowdown in immigration.

In a February 2022 national from the American Public Transportation Association, 71% of transit agencies reported that they’ve had to cut or delay service because of worker shortfalls.

The problem is heightened in sprawling rural areas such as East Texas, where commutes tend to be longer and labor is already in short supply.

“Part of the problem is that it’s not just us looking for help, but down the road Pilgrim’s Pride is looking for drivers at their processing plant, and Tyson [Foods] in Center is looking for help,” said Les Linebarger, spokesperson for the Nacogdoches school district, which runs about 40 daily bus routes. “We are all competing for that same small labor pool.”

The district reached out to multiple charter bus companies to help transport students to the recent football game, but they were all booked.

Farther north in Longview, the school district has filled vacant driver roles over the past few weeks. But without subs or alternate drivers, the district continues to run into problems whenever a driver calls in sick. When that happened in late October, the district combined two bus routes, placing more kids than usual on a single yellow bus.

Wayne Guidry, who serves as superintendent of business, transportation and technology, wasn’t surprised when a fight broke out between students on the bus that day.

“Ninety-eight percent of our problems come from kids having to be combined on buses,” Guidry said. “That’s when all the incidents like this happen.”

Districts have tried to combat the driver shortage by raising pay rates for bus drivers and by holding job fairs.

In Tyler, the school district’s communication team ran a targeted recruitment campaign last year, putting slogans like “Parents Do This for Free; We’ll Pay You’” on the sides of buses.

The Tyler school district also pays for the training drivers are required to complete before taking the test for a commercial driver’s license. Potential employees are hired as bus driver trainees at $12 an hour and get their commercial learner’s permit while taking the self-paced class. The class usually takes about two to three weeks to complete, according to the district’s spokesperson, Jennifer Hines. She said the program has helped the district with its 154 daily routes, but they are still short by eight drivers. Some district leaders said that new federal training requirements for bus drivers are excessive and make it too hard to hire new employees.

The U.S. Department of Transportation sets baseline training requirements for entry-level drivers. A was put in place in February, requiring drivers to take a class before taking the CDL test for a permit. Those classes must be taken through an entity approved by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and can take two to three weeks and cost hundreds of dollars.

“It’s kind of a double-edged sword,” Linebarger said. “Of course we want properly trained drivers and we want safe drivers, but on the other hand if it’s more difficult to become licensed, that’s going to affect your numbers.”

This article originally appeared in , a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

“It’s not fair, I have gym Tuesday at the end of the day, and I can’t play gym,” Tiheem said.

The DOE had arranged for the car service after Tiheem’s school bus stopped showing up in early November. As a special education student, he is entitled to “service by a yellow school bus” under his Individualized Education Program — a written plan that states what services and accommodations the school district is legally required to provide.

When the bus first stopped coming, Tiheem missed a week-and-a-half of school because he had no transportation from his Brooklyn home to the District 75 school he attended in Queens. District 75 schools educate some 25,000 NYC public school students with moderate to profound disabilities and are scattered across the city, meaning many special education students have long commutes. Their IEPs are supposed to ensure they have busing.

But IEPs are often not enough to deliver on that essential service in the nation’s largest school district, which has . In an effort to finally force change, Parents to Improve School Transportation announced their campaign to create a at a press conference Feb. 4, . The event, which had to go remote because of bad weather, was attended by roughly 70 people via Zoom, according to group founder Sara Catalinotto.

“Access to education is a civil and human right, for children of all abilities, all housing [status],” Catalinotto said. “Transit equity, including safe, on-time, fully staffed school bus routes is crucial to their access. … Rosa Parks taught us not to give in just because the system has been so abusive for so long.”

The parent organization is in the initial stages of getting a referendum onto the November ballot in New York City to approve the school bus bill of rights, a process that will require collecting thousands of voter signatures on a petition.

Brooklyn state Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon and Nick Smith, the city’s first deputy public advocate, both spoke at the press conference and said they would support the referendum campaign. Parents to Improve School Transportation plans to march across the Brooklyn Bridge March 19 to raise further awareness of their effort.

Catalinotto said her goals include increasing measures to prevent route problems, like limiting the number of schools and stops on each route. She also hopes to see steps taken to retain a dedicated workforce. She wants increased workforce training and Covid protections. She is pushing for accessible communication with the DOE’s Office of Pupil Transportation in all languages. Additionally, Catalinotto hopes to create a panel to oversee policy decisions regarding school transportation. 

In an email statement shortly after the press conference, DOE Press Secretary Jenna Lyle did not respond to questions about the bill of rights’ demands, but said insufficient busing is not acceptable. 

“Every day we provide approximately 150,000 students with quality transportation to and from school, and we are constantly working to improve service,” Lyle wrote. “We work closely with families, bus companies and schools to ensure a safe and efficient experience for all students and staff – anything less is unacceptable.”

Since the beginning of the school year, parents across New York City have been drawing attention to late, absent or understaffed buses, chronic barriers to their children’s education which grew worse under the pandemic and the . While some parents who spoke to The 74 said the issues they faced in the fall were resolved by December, they said they are still coping with the academic, economic and mental health repercussions. 

“I had to personally put my life on hold,” said Lynette Epps, who had to accompany her son Tiheem in the car service to and from school until he was assigned to a new school in January. “I had to turn down two jobs because of this.”

Others are still missing school due to problematic bus routes. The situation overwhelmingly impacts special education students, who have already suffered significant learning loss during COVID. 

Rima Izquierdo — a parent leader and the Bronx representative for the District 75 Leadership Team — said she advocates on behalf of families at her child’s campus. She said one currently has a bus that regularly picks up their child at 9 a.m., 40 minutes after school starts. Izquierdo said her 15-year-old son, whose IEP requires a paraprofessional accompany him on the bus, has also missed a lot of class time.

“I’m sure everyone hears my child in the background,” Izquierdo said during the virtual press conference. “Because of the para shortage, my bus para cannot take a day off or have an emergency without my son not losing the day of school because there is nobody to replace her.”

Izquierdo said the Office of Pupil Transportation said her child would be assigned a new bus route Feb. 14.

In a press release issued after the Feb. 4 event, the DOE said they resolve route issues quickly. 

“A vast majority of bus routes run smoothly throughout the city each day. Any one-off issues are escalated and efficiently addressed,” the department said in a statement.

Many NYC school families would disagree. Zariah Jimenez — a 19-year-old high school student at a Queens District 75 school — missed 25 days of school earlier this year because of late buses that violated her IEP’s limited travel time, according to her mother, Cheryl Ocampo. The issue took months to resolve.

Ocampo says Jimenez has trouble waiting for long periods of time and that waiting for the bus triggered her anxiety to the degree it became “a safety concern.” Ocampo had to leave work early to pick up her daughter herself. On days that she couldn’t afford to miss that time away from her job, Ocampo had to keep Jimenez at home.

“This school year’s school bus complications have profoundly impacted my daughter’s overall mental and physical health as well as her education and my employment,” Ocampo said, explaining that Jimenez developed anxiety about the bus, which led to sleeping issues. Ocampo said her daughter’s bus route was resolved in mid-December, but “my daughter is still trying to get back to some kind of normalcy.”

From the start of the school year until Dec. 3, Kelly Muñoz didn’t have a bus that met the limited-travel requirement in her sixth-grader’s IEP. Every morning, Muñoz had to do a two-hour round trip to get her child to and from their District 75 school in the South Bronx to their home in the Northwest Bronx. She said she counted driving 759 extra miles during that time.

“Mentally, I was drained and tired. There were days I was so stressed out from navigating traffic, missing meetings, playing catch up and parenting that I would want to just cry. I was having tons of headaches and even had an eye twitch in my left eye,” Muñoz said. “Taking on the responsibility of the DOE’s [Office of Pupil Transportation] was something no parent should have to do.”

An interesting set of case examples is surfacing as districts race to handle transportation issues this fall. Fueled by pandemic fears, strained labor markets and vaccine requirements, widespread shortages of bus drivers have left many districts scrambling to find a way to get kids to school as classes started up again. Newspaper headlines have blared stories of unfilled bus driver positions, delays in school start dates, canceled bus routes and hours-long waits for kids.

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Getting students to school is critical: Children can’t learn while waiting for the bus.

How districts react to these unusual labor challenges may be telling us something important: Whether they can adapt to meet the moment and which, if any, will consider adopting innovations that are common in other industries outside of education.

At one end of the scale, a handful of districts have struggled to solve their transportation problems. Districts in Pittsburgh and Rochester, New York, were and . In Anchorage, school is on, but the normal with no substitute in place.

Then there are districts doing more of the usual stuff, for example by offering across-the-board raises and more benefits to attract drivers. In a move late last month, Fairfax County in Virginia . Shelby County in Kentucky will provide part-time workers like bus drivers with .

But, it turns out that a surprising number of districts are pivoting in more significant ways, and doing so with warp speed. We’ve seen impressive shifts to re-envision compensation packages and even rethink working conditions to fill driver positions. A few districts have come up with creative (if temporary) workforce solutions. Perhaps most impressive are those completely rethinking how they provide transportation.

On pay, in the hopes of attracting new drivers and retaining existing employees, numerous districts have introduced a range of hiring and retention incentives with bonuses and enticements previously considered off limits in public education, where uniform pay tied to length of service has been standard practice. In recent weeks, districts like New Haven, Connecticut, have dangled cash through . In Springfield, Missouri, new drivers can receive an extra $4,000 if they stick around for the full school year, while existing employees can , serving as a peer coach to a new driver, maintaining a safe driving record and consistently showing up to work on time.

While these types of incentives have long been routine in the private sector, they are relatively uncommon in public education.

Other districts have changed working conditions and tapped new labor markets. Bozeman, Montana, for instance, is and trying to entice college students by . One New York State congressman is seeking .

In Massachusetts, the governor moved quickly to to provide temporary drivers in districts that could not find sufficient staff.

We think even more promising are the districts redesigning their delivery model altogether, often through the use of an emerging concept called co-production. Co-production is a mechanism where . In this case, parents are given incentives to arrange transportation previously provided by the district’s centralized bus service.

Enticement runs the gamut. The Lansing school district in Michigan began offering city bus passes and worth $25 a month to parents willing to drive their children to school. Some places are offering willing to take on the responsibility of getting their child to class, to the tune of and in .

The idea of paying parents may sound relatively simple and easy, but in practice, districts have had to navigate numerous roadblocks and make quick decisions to get it to work. In talking to district leaders, we’re hearing them sort through thorny decisions about the right payment schedule, who qualifies and whether to make payments contingent on attendance. They’ve had to consider tax implications and set up debit cards or find a vendor to issue the payments. In some cases, they had to work around state laws requiring district-provided transport (in New Jersey, policymakers that its state rules don’t mandate a yellow bus service).

In the larger context, paying parents to participate in getting their kids to school is a new and counterintuitive idea, especially for districts without a track record of seeing parents as formal partners in the education process. While districts have long touted the role of parents, an interesting question is whether this strategy of paying families for transportation could pave the way for similar strategies in other parts of the education puzzle. Would districts consider paying parents to ensure that kids have good attendance, or do their homework, or show up for tutoring? Or will some of these initiatives be viewed as short-term responses born out of necessity, due to the pandemic shortages or as a way to encourage social distancing?

Amid the flurry of activity, of course, some attempts will fail; that’s part of the innovation process. The first solution Chicago announced was a partnership with Uber and Lyft, which was quickly scrapped, as drivers lack sufficient background checks to work with children.

Some of the ideas districts are floating may not sound worthy of “innovation” status, but the changes reflect a serious departure from standard practice. Even one-time incentives for new hires can run up against longstanding labor agreements that prioritize standardization for all employees. Historically, has been to solve problems by adding more staff and to pay them using standard salary schedules. But that approach isn’t working as well these days.

All told, responses to the bus driver shortage make clear that some districts are better than others at pivoting to meet the moment. While COVID-19 has sparked rapid changes in ways never before seen in public education, it shouldn’t take a crisis to spur creative solutions. In many districts, transportation hasn’t worked well for years. Some of the innovations we’ve highlighted here are ; let’s hope that more places learn from these efforts and apply this same sort of creative thinking to other aspects of schooling. At a time when dramatic changes are upending so much of what schools have taken for granted, it may be the case that the districts that can adapt and innovate will be the ones best able to help their students succeed in the months and years ahead.

Chad Aldeman is policy director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University. Marguerite Roza, Ph.D., is director of the Edunomics Lab and a research professor at Georgetown University.

Today, Governor Charles Baker announced that the state of Massachusetts would be activating the National Guard and committing personnel to operate “school transport vans known as 7D vehicles to address staffing shortages in certain districts.”

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In , the state said the governor’s order “makes up to 250 personnel available. Beginning with training on Tuesday, 90 Guard members will prepare for service in Chelsea, Lawrence, Lowell, and Lynn … As with any school transportation worker, all activated Guard personnel will complete vehicle training to ensure the safety of children and families. Drivers will meet all statutory requirements for 7D drivers. Throughout the mission, the Guard will comply with all health and safety measures.”

Click to read the the full order: