LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Over a dozen Bullitt County bus drivers unable to make it to work Friday put the district and families in a bind just hours before school started.
Four schools in Bullitt County took a hit Friday morning when bus drivers couldn't cover routes and parents had to drop kids off instead. Shepherdsville Elementary was one of those schools. The carpool line there was wrapped out onto the street in both directions, and bus drivers say their frustrations are building and they need more help. One driver who did not want to be identified said drivers aren't motivated.
"I think it's going to be hard to find people because they have no incentives. They're not giving a hire-on bonus. You going to have to do something to get people in there to have to deal with all that. There's so many jobs that you're doing."
Bullitt County's interim transportation director says the district has just 98 bus drivers, and about 18 of them were out Friday. He says most of the drivers -- around 10-12 -- were out for COVID or exposure reasons. That meant all of their bus routes needed to be covered -- but the district had trouble covering them.
That's when the district made a Facebook post just hours before school started Friday today to ask families to drop their kids off if they can.
"We do have several routes that are down," Superintendent Dr. Jesse Bacon said in the post. "We're going to pickup all of our students; however they may be a little late getting picked up and delivered to school. We understand it is a little bit of an inconvenience to our families and we just ask they have a little bit of patience with us as we work through this issue."
Bacon says the district started the year in a tough spot with just enough bus drivers, and no substitutes.
"We don't have our sub pool where we would like for it to be, so this is not untypical where we do have a large number of drivers out," Bacon said. "Our bigger issue is we don't have the backups in place to be able to slide them in like we would in a normal year."
The Superintendent says other bus drivers doubled up on their routes to try and pick up all of the students. Many were late, but it is considered an excused tardy.
Drop-offs after school today will have similar issues with being late.
Bullitt County, as well as many other districts facing driver shortages, says it is working on better incentives to attract more people to the job. The district says it will communicate with families who may be impacted next week as well.
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