Bus driver shortages hitting some school districts harder than others

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Getting students to and from schools has been "a challenge" during the first two weeks of the 2022-23 school year at Bullitt County Public Schools, Superintendent Jesse Bacon said.

The district announced a late route cancellation Tuesday after a medical emergency, giving families of students at North Bullitt High School, Hebron Middle School and Brooks Elementary School little notice that their children needed to find another way to get home at the end of the day.

"I understand their frustration and I would just ask that they be patient with us, because, a lot of times, we don't know that a driver is going to miss until the last minute," Bacon said Wednesday.

"Things come up. Illnesses happen,. Emergencies happen. We're committed to communicating that to our families as absolutely as soon as we possibly can. Unfortunately, with the lack of folks that we've got available to fill in on a substitute basis, sometimes, those notices are going to come with very little prep time for that."

The late outage was among six scheduled morning and afternoon route cancellations and one morning outage Tuesday at BCPS, according to the district.

Bacon said such cancellations will be the norm until the district can hire more drivers, estimating BCPS needs another 20-25 drivers and substitute drivers to fully-staff routes and cover for absences.

"We feel good about the 78 routes that we're at right now, but as it stands, we only have 75 full-time drivers for those 78 routes and only a handful of subs," he said. "And so anytime that we're down due to illness or other reasons why drivers might have to miss, then that puts us behind the eight ball."

BCPS has consolidated routes and added pay incentives to entice prospective bus drivers to join the district's transportation team, and it's not the only school district in the Louisville area dealing with staffing issues in transportation.

Jefferson County Public Schools has dozens of prospective drivers moving through the hiring process, and the number of delayed routes has dropped from more than 50 to around 40 since the beginning of the 2022-23 school year on Aug. 10.

Many of the JCPS bus delays hit or exceed an hour, with the longest delay totaling two and a half hours for a route covering the Georgia Chaffee Teenage Parent Program, according to the district's bus delay dashboard that's updated every Saturday.

Oldham County Schools had to adjust start and dismissal times before the 2022-23 school year to help with its shortage of bus drivers. The district has two prospective bus drivers in training and about five more who will begin training within a couple of weeks, OCS Communications Director Lori Webb said in an email.

"I would say we're about 20 short right now," she said.

New Albany Floyd County Schools is short one full-time driver and three flex drivers, said Eric Reid, the school corporation's transportation director.

So far this school year, NAFCS has had to cancel 13 drivers' routes, he said. Each driver covers two morning routes and two afternoon routes, meaning 52 bus routes were affected by outages.

"That's way more than in recent school years, but we've also had more staff in the past that we were able to cover those routes," Reid said.

Like BCPS, NAFCS has added pay incentives in hopes of hiring and keeping drivers on staff. Reid says the school corporation offers $1,200 for signing bonuses or to pay for training and an attendance bonus paid every semester.

Greater Clark County Schools has had better luck so far this school year. GCCS Transportation Director Daniel Borders says no bus routes have been cancelled this year and while the school corporation continues to hire new drivers, bus routes are fully staffed.

"GCCS had an extremely smooth start to the school year regarding transportation," Borders said in an email. "Our team has worked tirelessly over the summer to make sure we were fully staffed on the first day."

Hardin County Schools has had similar success in transportation staffing. John Wright, the district's community relations specialist, said HCS is "in great shape" with bus drivers.

"We could use probably 5 to 10 substitute drivers, but other than that we are doing very, very well," he said in an email.

School districts have to compete with private sector employers that offer higher pay, which Bacon says makes filling vacancies throughout his district more challenging.

"We've got a private sector job market right now that is just able to compensate workers at a higher rate than we are," Bacon said. "That's a very, very real challenge for us. It's something that we're trying to address from a district standpoint, but we only have limited ways that we can increase revenue to increase salary and compensation packages districtwide."