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1. #School bus driver shortage in richland wa drivers#
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#School bus driver shortage in richland wa full#

“It’s really important that we can get back to full transportation so that our students can have the access that they deserve to education,” said Jim Carpenter, the district’s deputy superintendent of operations.

#School bus driver shortage in richland wa drivers#

With those new bell times, the existing drivers will work longer shifts and drive to several schools back-to-back, but the district is still short 20 more drivers.

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This fall, schools will start in three time windows based on grade levels: 7:30 to 7:40 a.m., 8:05 to 8:25 a.m., and 8:50 to 9:10 a.m. Worse, the district said many of its older drivers decided to retire during the pandemic, and transportation officials couldn’t hire new recruits to replace them.īefore COVID-19, Denver schools had 20 to 30 different bell times across the district. In addition to launching a driver recruitment campaign statewide, Dellinger said he wants to expedite the 12-week process for training school bus drivers.ĭenver Public Schools has been experiencing a bus driver shortage for about four years, coming up short by 45 to 55 drivers on average at any given time. In Pittsburgh, 638 students currently don’t have transportation to school because there aren’t enough school bus drivers. A significant portion of the school bus drivers across the state are retirees, he said, who don’t want to risk exposure to the virus. Pennsylvania School Bus Association Executive Director Ryan Dellinger said the school bus driver shortage in his state had been an issue since well before COVID-19 hit, but the pandemic added new obstacles.

Hime said the impact of the driver shortage, besides the reduced routes, has been that drivers are working extra shifts. After Milwaukee schools closed to in-person instruction in March of 2020, the district’s drivers had to take other jobs, and only about 60 percent to 70 percent returned when schools reopened. Cherie Hime, the executive director of the Wisconsin School Bus Association, said the issue had been ongoing for 20 years in the state but became a “transportation logistics nightmare” during the pandemic. Milwaukee Public Schools canceled 160 bus routes in April because there weren’t enough drivers. In the meantime, some districts are cutting back on transportation services. He said the worst effects of the pandemic-fueled shortages are yet to come.Įxperts say the school bus driver shortage could be improved by offering paid training, and better benefits to attract newcomers to the field, focusing on driver retention, and staggering school start times so the same buses can run two routes per shift. “You’re not seeing the full ramification of this because we are just kind of returning to school,” said National School Transportation Association Executive Director Curt Macysyn.

#School bus driver shortage in richland wa license#

And with driver’s license agencies closed for a significant period during the pandemic, districts weren’t able to certify new recruits. But filling those bus driver seats has been a struggle for many districts because of the short hours, rigorous training, and a shrunken pool of substitute drivers.

Other drivers have transitioned to jobs in the private sector after a year of being unemployed or furloughed.īecause of social distancing protocols, school buses are operating at about 50 percent capacity, in most places, which means schools will need many more additional drivers as schools reopen.

Some are older or have pre-existing medical conditions, making them at high risk for complications from COVID-19. One problem is that many bus drivers are not returning to those jobs when schools reopen. More than half of school districts with 25,000 to 100,000 students said they believed it could take three months or more to resume normal transportation operations. In a survey taken in March by HopSkipDrive, nearly four-fifths of school transportation professionals including superintendents, directors of transportation, and school transportation staff said the bus driver shortage was a problem for them. As more Americans receive COVID-19 vaccines and schools reopen, school districts across the country are struggling to find bus drivers to transport students back to school.įinding school bus drivers has been a longstanding problem for districts, but it’s been exacerbated by the pandemic and the widespread return to school.