LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Getting students to and from schools safely during a global pandemic may be a challenge for Kentucky’s largest school district as it prepares to reopen classrooms.
Jefferson County Public Schools Superintendent Marty Pollio has said COVID-19 vaccinations for teachers and staff will begin Friday at Broadbent Arena. That puts the district on track to potentially start reopening classrooms in a matter of weeks based on a recent timeline presented to the Jefferson County Board of Education, which will ultimately decide when students and staff can return to schools.
The district anticipates staff will receive the Moderna vaccine, which requires a four-week wait before boosters can be administered, followed by another seven-day waiting period. Pollio has said JCPS will reopen classrooms for the district’s youngest students first based on how many vaccines and boosters are administered initially.
But transportation staffing issues may prove a difficult test for JCPS as dozens of drivers and substitutes left the district during 2020, personnel records presented to the school board during the COVID-19 pandemic show.
Renee Murphy, chief communications and community relations officer for JCPS, said the district is working on route assignments to ensure “there’s a driver for every route.”
“While that's an area of concern, we also feel very confident that we will have enough bus drivers in place to make sure all of our routes are covered when school does reopen for in-person instruction,” she said Tuesday.
JCPS expects about 60% of its more than 96,000 students will choose to return to schools once classrooms reopen based on preliminary survey results from district families. However, not all will need transportation to and from schools.
Eighty-seven percent of district students have been covered in survey responses so far, and Murphy said families can still change their selections.
“That's a big part of our planning and will let us know about how many kids will come back in-person, and that will impact our transportation as well,” Murphy said.
John Stovall, president of Teamsters Local 783, said JCPS needs about 175 more bus drivers for normal operations, and losing more may put the district in a precarious position as it prepares to reopen schools.
“They can’t take losing any more than what they’ve already had,” Stovall said. “… I’m fearful that we have a lot of drivers who are middle-aged or older, they’re going to say, ‘I’m not willing to take that chance,’ and they’re going to leave.”
“Say you lose another 50 or 200,” he said. “Then it’s going to be dicey.”
The district has lost more bus drivers shortly before and during the COVID-19 pandemic than have been hired, according to personnel records reviewed by WDRB News.
Personnel records presented at Jefferson County Board of Education meetings since JCPS ceased in-person learning in March show 59 full-time and permanent part-time bus drivers left the district since January 2020, 44 of them by resignation and five by retirement. Seven others were fired by JCPS, and three died.
Another 15 drivers have not returned from leave taken during the time period reviewed by WDRB News.
The district has not hired a single full-time or permanent part-time driver to replace those who have departed, instead adding 40 substitute bus drivers, records show. One substitute driver hired in that time resigned within two weeks, according to personnel reports.
JCPS has also lost substitute bus drivers already on its roster. Fifteen substitutes resigned between February and December 2020, and four others were fired, personnel records show.
“If all 40 of them are truly just substitute bus drivers, that’s going to be a problem because they’re not used to running around so they really haven’t had the time to have that route simulation due to the pandemic,” Stovall said, noting that many substitutes are retired drivers and do not need as much practice as complete beginners.
“If that’s the case then that will help the district tremendously,” he said.
Diane Porter, the school board’s chairwoman who represents District 1, said the JCPS administration will need to develop backup transportation plans as it prepares to reopen schools.
“I am concerned about how we will transport the students, but I depend on transportation and the superintendent to share with us what the plan will be,” she said. “It’s great to have a plan, but it also makes sense to have a backup plan.”
Bus drivers will be included in the initial round of vaccinations, though Murphy said none will be among the 1,200 staff members from 22 schools who will receive their first doses Friday.
District records show that 550 full-time and permanent part-time bus drivers of the 807 on staff, or 68.2%, have requested COVID-19 vaccinations while 111 declined and 140 did not respond to the district’s survey. Only eight of 64 substitute drivers have requested vaccines, with every other substitute driver failing to answer the district’s survey, records obtained by WDRB News show.
In all, district records indicate 72 full-time and permanent part-time drivers and two substitute drivers have requested employment accommodations once JCPS resumes in-person instruction.
Drivers assigned to routes will need at least three weeks to practice their new routes and prepare for the start of in-person instruction, Stovall said.
Bus drivers have been given other assignments while nontraditional instruction continues at JCPS, such as helping deep-clean schools, landscaping and security at bus lots.
“You can bring the drivers back from what they’re doing now to check their routes, doing their lefts and rights, making sure what stops they have, and make sure that they can line them up so that no kid is waiting out in the snow, rain or freezing rain, stuff like that,” Stovall said. “… Then they'll be able to determine exactly how many drivers they’re short and how they're going to fix it.”
When JCPS schools reopen, bus drivers will also have new responsibilities because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Masks and hand sanitizer after boarding will be mandatory for riders, and drivers will assign seats to help trace contacts if anyone falls ill with COVID-19, according to the district’s back-to-school plan presented to the board in October. Buses will not have capacity limits as students are spaced out “to the extent possible,” and seats at the front of buses will be reserved for students who show symptoms of infection, the plan says.
Parents will be asked to sign affidavits swearing that they will not send their children to school if they have temperatures above 100.4 degrees, according to the plan.
Drivers will be tasked with sanitizing their buses between runs, including at depots. Staff will be on hand to help enforce social distancing while students change buses at depots, according to the back-to-school plan.
Stovall says the biggest concerns for drivers center on bus capacities, route times and enforcing new requirements like wearing masks.
“I think those added responsibilities will make a lot of them say, ‘Man, it’s just not worth it,’” he said.
Stovall worries that misgivings about added responsibilities for bus drivers during the COVID-19 pandemic and fears of exposure to the coronavirus will also affect the district’s recruitment of new drivers.
“Bus driver’s already a challenging job to begin with,” Stovall said. “I mean, let’s be honest. You’ve got kids on the bus and some are great little kids and other ones are unruly and you’ve got to deal with that, and now you throw a pandemic on top of it and you’ve got to worry about the virus and how it can be transmitted.”
“All those things, they don’t help on trying to retain or attract new drivers,” he said.
But Porter believes the COVID-19 pandemic may make it easier to find people willing to drive school buses once JCPS reopens classrooms because “there are a lot of people in our community that are looking for jobs because other jobs have been furloughed or terminated.”
“I think we have to realistically, which is what I talked about at the board meeting, look at the numbers that we have, look at the potential for bus drivers to not return to us and how will we fill that gap,” Porter said, “so I think it will be a challenge that we will have to work through to make sure that we get people in place to be our bus drivers.”
Murphy said finding and hiring new bus drivers is “a constant process” for JCPS, especially as it prepares to reopen classrooms for the first time since mid-March.
“We've done a lot of great things to try and recruit more bus drivers to JCPS,” Murphy said. “We've had our ‘Drive the Future’ campaign, we've had job fairs, and we're really working to build on the relationships that we already have with our existing bus drivers to tell a friend if they know someone who's in need of employment.”
“If you are looking for employment right now. We encourage you to look at being a bus driver with JCPS,” she said.
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