This is the second in a two-part series. Part I was published on Aug. 24.
ASHLAND — During the COVID-19 pandemic, school districts nationwide struggled to transport kids to schools.
Sometimes it was because of drivers calling in sick — like in Mansfield, where students got an unexpected day off when there weren’t enough bus drivers to pick them up in January 2022.
But in other cases, shortages were due to the one-two punch of a “silver-tsunami” of retirements from an aging workforce, and a struggle to recruit new workers, according to a report from TransitCenter.
The result is that over 40% of school districts in Ohio had to cancel bus routes regularly in 2021, according to a survey from the Ohio Association for Pupil Transportation.
At Ashland Source’s Talk the Vote event last fall, community members were concerned about this trend. Did the shortage spread to Ashland? Can Ashland City Schools attract enough bus drivers to fill these positions?
In the second part of our two-part series on staffing shortages and pay woes at Ashland City Schools, Ashland Source will be exploring the answers to these questions and more.
The Shortage
The good news for the 2022-2023 school year is that all of Ashland City School’s 17 bus routes are filled.
“We are in a good position, I know that other districts are hurting right now for drivers but we are in a good position currently to get the job done,” Ashland City Schools Business Manager Steve Paramore said.
But while all the routes are filled, that does not mean the district is fully staffed.
Kim Chance is the president of the Ashland Chapter of the Ohio Association of Public School Employees (OAPSE) in addition to working as a full-time bus driver with Ashland City Schools.
She says that while the routes are filled, the district is still short two full-time bus drivers.
The district has tapped a school librarian and a bus aide to drive two routes in lieu of having two dedicated drivers, she said.
Bus mechanics, Transportation Director Doug Shipper, and even Business Manager Steve Paramore are also certified to drive school buses.
And the district currently does not have any substitute bus drivers, meaning that when a driver calls in sick, the district combines bus routes, Paramore said.
So while Ashland has enough people that can drive buses for the upcoming school year, it is short on full-time bus drivers and substitutes.
Like TransitCenter’s report, Chance placed the blame for Ashland’s shortage on one thing: retirements.
“We’ve been short bus drivers for, probably since COVID struck because we had a few retire,” Chance said. Only “one or two” drivers left due to COVID concerns during the pandemic, she added.
But when a driver retires, the district may struggle to recruit replacements because of the job’s peculiarities and its pay and benefits.
The Job (and its benefits)
Before becoming a school bus driver, applicants have to navigate a dizzying number of tests and certifications, which may dissuade new applicants and slow down the hiring process, Chance said.
For example, an aspiring school bus driver must have a commercial driver’s license (CDL), pass a BCI and FBI background check, pass a physical exam, pass a drug test, report their driving data to the Ohio Department of Education, and undergo hours of pre-service training.
Once a driver is hired, the job itself is more than just driving, Chance said.
“You have a huge responsibility of 80 kids behind you. And the teachers are not putting a classroom on wheels and expected to teach 80 students,” she said.
“Where we have to keep them under control after they’ve been sugared up from the parties and everything else.”
Ashland City Schools currently does not offer benefits to its part-time drivers who only work as drivers, which Chance believes is the main reason they struggle to recruit.
For a driver to be classified as full-time, they have to work over 4.33 hours a day. Any driver that works less than that, perhaps because they have a second job, is not eligible for health benefits, Chance said.
However, district employees that have a second role in the schools are eligible for benefits if they drive less than the full-time amount, Chance added.
“Let’s say they’re doing a four-hour job in the kitchen or a three- and a half-hour job in the kitchen, they can have that job and drive bus and get benefits,” she said.
She also believes that pay for the district’s drivers should be higher. They currently start at $19.50/hour, meaning that a driver working five hours per day for the 180-day school year would make around $17,550 a year.
The hourly pay for bus drivers is set to increase to $19.70/hour next year, which would net drivers an extra $240 a year.
Meanwhile, the average truck driver in the United States, which also requires a CDL, makes around $71,000 per year, according to Indeed.
What works?
School districts across the country have seen success recruiting bus drivers in a variety of ways.
Prince George County in Maryland recently hosted a school bus driver career fair that attracted over a hundred community members. A bus driver trainer for Prince George County public schools estimated the event will result in dozens of new hires, according to a story from Fox 5.
And in Waterford, Michigan, a bus driver named Lynette Bright made a video of her singing in an effort to recruit more drivers for her school district. The video garnered over 7,000 likes on the district’s Facebook page and resulted in at least one interested person reaching out to become a bus driver, according to a story from The Oakland Press.
For districts looking to ramp up recruitment, BusBoss — a company that makes bus routing software — has a list of eight recommendations. They include:
- Reach out to to other CDL owners
- Provide full training
- Advertise on bus sides
- Send direct mail flyers
- Buy radio ads
- Offer better benefits
- Give recruitment bonuses
- Prepare an outreach pitch and look for speaking opportunities
For some drivers like Kim Chance, the opportunity to work with children, and at their kids’ own school district, is all the recruitment they need.
“I just enjoyed working with the kids. And it was a point where I was able to kinda move into a full-time position with the schools and my kids were all in school,” Chance said.
