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As students prepare to return to the classroom amid the coronavirus pandemic, school officials are grappling with another problem. How do they get kids to school? A nationwide bus driver shortage has left school districts across the country scrambling to figure out how to get kids to school.
There are many reasons for the shortage, including health concerns over the highly transmissible Delta variant, low pay, and a lack of full-time hours. Many school bus drivers were forced to take jobs in other industries, so they could earn money while schools were closed due to the pandemic. In addition, with many commercial driving schools closed, there was no way to train new drivers to replace those who left or retired.
"There's always a fair amount of turnover, but it's worse this year because we got behind the curve during COVID," Todd Watkins, director of transportation for the Montgomery County School District in Maryland, told the Washington Post. "We offer great benefits, but there can be disadvantages to this job: You work a split shift, so you don't get eight hours a day. You don't have good summer employment. So there are a fair amount of people who think the grass is greener someplace else."
To deal with the lack of bus drivers, some schools are making cuts to routes, leaving parents scrambling to figure out how to get their kids to school. Other schools are being forced to get creative to deal with the issue. According to the Washington Post, a charter school is offering to pay parents to drive their kids to schools. School officials at the EastSide Charter School in Wilmington, Delaware, parents $700 to drop off and pick up their children for the entire school year.
Aaron Bass, chief executive of EastSide, told the Post that 155 of the school's 500 parents have signed up.
"I wish I could use that money for buses, but I can't because we don't have drivers," Bass said. "It's one more economic ripple from the pandemic."