7 ms·

Why America has a school bus driver shortage

29 points by stephsmithio 5y ago

fnord77 5y ago
tl;dr: people with commercial drivers licenses can get much higher paying jobs doing other types of driving.
- fatnoah 5y ago
  Types of driving that also don't involve dealing with other peoples' children.
  - ghoward 5y ago
    I trained as a school bus driver, and I agree with both of you, but especially the dealing with children part. I quit my job as a bus driver on my second day because I was stressed out about hurting kids. (Yes, I know school buses are among the safest vehicles on the road; it was an irrational fear.) But the other part of the equation is the schedule. You are hired as a part-time employee, no benefits, but the schedule is such that finding a second job is unlikely. In the district I trained in, the schedule was 6-9, 12-2. Those are awkward hours to work around.
    - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
      The solution is to recruit teachers to work as drivers.
      - gruez 5y ago
        AFAIK teachers are often overworked and/or do extra work outside of the classroom. I doubt they'd want a few extra hours tacked onto their existing schedule.
      - hiptobecubic 5y ago
        The solution is to make the job attractive enough that people are willing to do it.
      - effingwewt 5y ago
        Every teacher I've ever known on a personal level has been overworked and underpaid, and still had to go into their own pockets tl provide things for their class, from what I understand it's common practice at schools now to force costs to the teachers, or have them shunt it to the parents (have student bring X for class!) because we dont already pay for the schools with taxes, lunches, after school programs and electives, uniforms, bake sales, candy drives, etc.
    - UncleOxidant 5y ago
      Bus drivers get benefits in the district I live in and the pay is not too bad. Still, I'd never consider it because the kids part.
      - ghoward 5y ago
        I'd love to get benefits. Curious: does your district have a shortage too? If not, maybe the benefits make the difference?
        UncleOxidant 5y ago
        They definitely seem to be hiring: https://www.beaverton.k12.or.us/departments/transportation/come-drive-for-us https://www.beaverton.k12.or.us/departments/transportation/c...
    - bluGill 5y ago
      School bus driver is a good job for otherwise stay at home parents. You drive your kids to school and back home everyday and get paid for it. Sure if you drove your own care you could do the round trip in half an hour, while the bus means it takes 2 hours, but you get paid and ensure you kids actually go to school every day. You can also take the babies along with you to work (or at least my school allowed that) It is also a good I'm retired but need to get out of the house to do something job. Otherwise yes, you can earn more elsewhere with better hours.
      - ghoward 5y ago
        Replying to say that yes, you are absolutely correct. I spoke quite definitely when there were other options, and you rightly called me out for it.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  Does this point to a solution in the form of using smaller vehicles that don't require a CDL? School buses are super inefficient because kids are all spread out, so you end up driving a huge 6 MPG diesel a lot of miles to pick up 40 kids. Or worse, driving it a lot of miles to pick up less than 40 kids. If you used smaller vehicles to pick up the same number of kids, you would need more of them, but they would each only have to cover a fraction of the bus route, and they get much better mileage. The main reason not to use smaller vehicles is that you need more drivers. Not as many as you would have additional vehicles, because with shorter routes the same driver could cover two of them in the same time. But if you're all out of CDL drivers and there are a surplus of, effectively, Uber drivers, then that goes the other way, right?
  - cmeacham98 5y ago
    If you're going to hire more drivers, might as well instead pay your existing drivers more. You'll get drivers that are more skilled and care more. Do you really want the equivalent of an Uber driver taking your kid to school each day?
    - dstaley 5y ago
      I think the idea is just a larger number of drivers driving smaller, typical vehicles, not literally using Uber/ride-share drivers.
    - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
      > If you're going to hire more drivers, might as well instead pay your existing drivers more. They already get paid more than Uber drivers. The problem is that "more" isn't enough right now, and there comes a point where the alternative is less expensive. > You'll get drivers that are more skilled and care more. There isn't a "caring" section on the CDL test. Why is the assumption that anyone without a CDL is some kind of negligent drug addict?
      - cmeacham98 5y ago
        The assumption is that drivers that are paid more are more caring.
- Supermancho 5y ago
  This is accurate.
egypturnash 5y ago
Huh, I'm surprised, my initial guess of "pays like shit" wasn't the primary reason - "bus driving has been privatized and the for-profit bus companies laid everyone off for C19" was the main one, with a chaser of "doesn't pay as well as other driving jobs".
- gruez 5y ago
  >"bus driving has been privatized and the for-profit bus companies laid everyone off for C19" was the main one To be fair, they'd be happy to keep the drivers on the payroll if the schools continued to pay for their service.
  - egypturnash 5y ago
    Sure can't use any of the $173 million they made in profit last year, though.
    - gruez 5y ago
      They could, but they don't because it's not their responsibility. Likewise, should we shame rich silicon valley knowledge workers because they didn't pay to keep their local restaurants afloat during the pandemic?
      - egypturnash 5y ago
        No, but we should shame the rich silicon valley workers for participating in the same kind of relentless race to find perfectly functioning systems that they can wedge themselves into the middle of and extract profit from while making life for everyone else a little shittier, just as we should shame the for-profit bus companies. Oh, and we should also shame the elected officials that keep on cutting the amount of money being given to public education. And possibly everyone who votes for them, as well.
        gruez 5y ago
        >No Why not? They're private entities too, with plenty of money to keep the neighborhood resturant from having to shut down. Or better yet, pay their babysitter/dog walker even though they don't need their services? >but we should shame the rich silicon valley workers for participating in the same kind of relentless race to find perfectly functioning systems that they can wedge themselves into the middle of and extract profit from while making life for everyone else a little shittier I fail to see how this applies for someone working for FAANG. >just as we should shame the for-profit bus companies. No, we shouldn't, because that's not their job. There's a clear delineation of what's the private sector's responsibility and what's the governments. I sure as hell don't want my pandemic stimulus checks to depend on whether I happened to work for a well-off company or not. >we should also shame the elected officials that keep on cutting the amount of money being given to public education US has above-average per-pupil spending compared to other OECD countries. I doubt money is actually an issue. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/figures/CMD/Figure_3_CMD-flat.svg https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/figures/CMD/Figure_3_CMD-fl...
silisili 5y ago
The article mainly focuses on pay. And that's true, bus drivers need and deserve way, way more money. Anyone with a CDL can go out and make 6 digits without much trouble. Yet they want people to do it for 1/4 the money. In addition to more money, they need more power to throw kids off the bus or ban them outright. Today they must just tolerate kids cussing you out, throwing things at you, and oftentimes trying to physically assault you. You wouldn't believe the awful things I saw on a public schoolbus. You'd have to be insane to sign up for that in current conditions.
sys_64738 5y ago
Is this similar to the HGV issues Britain is having with food and fuel shortages? Nobody to deliver it.
- makomk 5y ago
  Very similar. Part of the story here seems to be that the US also has shortages of HGV drivers that have also caused issues like fuel stations having to close: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-02/a-trucking-crisis-has-the-u-s-looking-for-more-drivers-abroad https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-02/a-truckin... Since it's basically the same license to drive a school bus or a truck, all those drivers can now get plenty of better-paying work. (As far as I can tell, the only reason this hasn't turned into a full-on fuel crisis like in the UK is because it hasn't been featured on the front page of the American equivalent of the BBC and the Sun, which means the US hasn't had the large-scale panic buying the UK did. Nearly all the examples of petrol stations running out of fuel here are due to massively increased demand rather than an underlying lack of supply; they just don't have the infrastructure to cope with everyone deciding to fill their tanks full at once even if everything's running perfectly. I've seen hints that there are empty shop shelves in the US too from people there complaining about it, but that doesn't have news coverage at all.)
unanswered 5y ago
America has an everything shortage because we shut down the damn country for a bad variant of the common cold.
kayodelycaon 5y ago
There isn’t a labor shortage. There’s a shortage of people willing to be abused and exploited. I don’t think any amount of money would be enough for me to work with retail customers again. Much less unruly kids that you can’t do anything about. If it’s between your story and the story the kid told their parents, you’ll lose that battle most of the time and likely end up getting yourself in more trouble than you already were. As soon as the customer stops being always right, we can talk about pay.
- animal_spirits 5y ago
  > I don’t think any amount of money would be enough for me to work with retail customers again. That _really_ depends on how much money you currently have.
  - kayodelycaon 5y ago
    There are a lot of options I could and would take before working with the public. Many people have done just that.
- gruez 5y ago
  > There isn’t a labor shortage. There’s a shortage of people willing to be abused and exploited. and those "abused and exploited" people are providing the labor, leading to a labor shortage. I don't understand people who think "shortage" need to be qualified by how sympathetic the reason for the shortage is. You can either be the type of person who thinks any failure to meet demand is a shortage, or that shortages don't exist because people can simply pay more. The in-between of "there's a failure to meet demand but they deserve it so it's not really a shortage" seems like trying to inject subjectivity to an objective word.
  - kayodelycaon 5y ago
    The people saying there is a shortage of workers aren’t using the dictionary definitions. There is a shortage of people willing to accept their terms. There isn’t a shortage of people who want to work.
rgbrenner 5y ago
"There's a lot of downtime during the day that you don't get paid for. You might work a 10-hour day, but you only get compensated for your shifts. .... [Corey Ford] as a driver, he earned $19/hr, which works out to a pre-tax income of ~$19.4k for 180 days of 5-hour shifts." Imagine a job that required your entire day, but they decided not to pay you during the late morning through the early afternoon. This has got to be one of the worst paying jobs in the country. I'm surprised they could fill their roles during normal times.
- monkeybutton 5y ago
  Part time hours but fulltime availability! What a complete scam. My spouse working in healthcare ran into this at one job. It didn't last long. And they wondered why employee retention was miserable. What's even the point of working at a place that demands such unpaid concessions? Those hours represent an opportunity cost and should be paid for. They are not free.
- CapitalistCartr 5y ago
  Waiting tables often have "split shifts".
  - windlep 5y ago
    Maybe not a surprise that they also have trouble getting employee's right now?
  - effingwewt 5y ago
    Also, sending people home whenever they feel like it/are slow. Some places have made this illegal but it still happens all the time. Try pulling that on the emlloywr though and see how quickly you are fired. The imbalances we put up with are maybe getting ironed out.
- mhb 5y ago
  OK. But you left out this part ...he realized that he made more money off of unemployment benefits (~$2k/month) than he did as a bus driver.
Limb 5y ago
I have a Class B CDL (with a medical cert restriction since it was for a state job, meaning no commerical jobs unless I get a medical done. I presume driving a school bus would be exempt for this) in New York. I guess I was one of the "500k+" people targeted by NYS, as I received an email asking me to apply to be a school bus driver. I gave it a quick thought before realizing that I work a 9 to 5 job, so there was no way I could even work the job if I wanted to. Besides the other good reasons mentioned in the article and this thread, I'm sure that also restricts the number of applicants because most people can't work during those hours unless they are retired or unemployed.
TedShiller 5y ago
There is no labor shortage. There's currently an excess of unemployment benefits. There's no point in working when you make less than not working.
- InvertedRhodium 5y ago
  Sounds like a wage shortage is also a possible explanation.
  - TedShiller 5y ago
    Sure, benefits currently exceed wages. You can't blame them for not working, it's the rational thing to do.
- eigengrau5150 5y ago
  > There's currently an excess of unemployment benefits. If unemployment pays better than working, then workers aren't getting paid enough. The solution is not to cut unemployment benefits.
  - TedShiller 5y ago
    I never claimed cutting benefits is the solution.
    - eigengrau5150 5y ago
      No, but I've seen plenty of people imply such when claiming that unemployment paid better than working.
      - TedShiller 5y ago
        Got it. I personally wouldn't work either if pay was that low.
akoluthic 5y ago
In our local district, rather than have individual buses for elementary, middle school, etc., they are having one driver pick up the elementary kids, drop them off, the go back out and pick up the older kids. They had to change the start times for elementary and high school to make this work, and they're also paying the drivers more, but it seems to be working. One issue is that if a single driver goes down (illness, etc.) it's a huge hit to logistics, and subs are hard to come by. But mostly they've made it work.
- ghoward 5y ago
  Not saying you're wrong, but... The district I am in does that, and they cannot find enough drivers at all.
PebblesRox 5y ago
"We've spent decades closing neighborhood schools, consolidating schools in unwalkable locations, and making our communities more dangerous places for kids to walk and bike, all while public transportation became less frequent and less available. As late as 1969, about half of kids under 15 usually walked or bicycled to school. By 2009, the figure was 13 percent." https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/9/23/the-school-bus-driver-shortage-is-a-problem-we-didnt-have-to-have https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/9/23/the-school-bus...
TedShiller 5y ago
There is also no "shortage" of materials like microchips. Those are all just fancy ways of saying INFLATION. If you pay enough, you'll get those microchips delivered to wherever you want by tomorrow morning, trust me. That's how the world works, like it or not.
- hiptobecubic 5y ago
  I feel like you don't know what the word "shortage" is for.
  - TedShiller 5y ago
    You may feel that, but that doesn't mean everyone does.

29 points by stephsmithio 5y ago

fnord77 5y ago

tl;dr: people with commercial drivers licenses can get much higher paying jobs doing other types of driving.

fatnoah 5y ago
Types of driving that also don't involve dealing with other peoples' children.
- ghoward 5y ago
  I trained as a school bus driver, and I agree with both of you, but especially the dealing with children part. I quit my job as a bus driver on my second day because I was stressed out about hurting kids. (Yes, I know school buses are among the safest vehicles on the road; it was an irrational fear.) But the other part of the equation is the schedule. You are hired as a part-time employee, no benefits, but the schedule is such that finding a second job is unlikely. In the district I trained in, the schedule was 6-9, 12-2. Those are awkward hours to work around.
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    The solution is to recruit teachers to work as drivers.
    - gruez 5y ago
      AFAIK teachers are often overworked and/or do extra work outside of the classroom. I doubt they'd want a few extra hours tacked onto their existing schedule.
    - hiptobecubic 5y ago
      The solution is to make the job attractive enough that people are willing to do it.
    - effingwewt 5y ago
      Every teacher I've ever known on a personal level has been overworked and underpaid, and still had to go into their own pockets tl provide things for their class, from what I understand it's common practice at schools now to force costs to the teachers, or have them shunt it to the parents (have student bring X for class!) because we dont already pay for the schools with taxes, lunches, after school programs and electives, uniforms, bake sales, candy drives, etc.
  - UncleOxidant 5y ago
    Bus drivers get benefits in the district I live in and the pay is not too bad. Still, I'd never consider it because the kids part.
    - ghoward 5y ago
      I'd love to get benefits. Curious: does your district have a shortage too? If not, maybe the benefits make the difference?
      - UncleOxidant 5y ago
        They definitely seem to be hiring: https://www.beaverton.k12.or.us/departments/transportation/come-drive-for-us https://www.beaverton.k12.or.us/departments/transportation/c...
  - bluGill 5y ago
    School bus driver is a good job for otherwise stay at home parents. You drive your kids to school and back home everyday and get paid for it. Sure if you drove your own care you could do the round trip in half an hour, while the bus means it takes 2 hours, but you get paid and ensure you kids actually go to school every day. You can also take the babies along with you to work (or at least my school allowed that) It is also a good I'm retired but need to get out of the house to do something job. Otherwise yes, you can earn more elsewhere with better hours.
    - ghoward 5y ago
      Replying to say that yes, you are absolutely correct. I spoke quite definitely when there were other options, and you rightly called me out for it.
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
Does this point to a solution in the form of using smaller vehicles that don't require a CDL? School buses are super inefficient because kids are all spread out, so you end up driving a huge 6 MPG diesel a lot of miles to pick up 40 kids. Or worse, driving it a lot of miles to pick up less than 40 kids. If you used smaller vehicles to pick up the same number of kids, you would need more of them, but they would each only have to cover a fraction of the bus route, and they get much better mileage. The main reason not to use smaller vehicles is that you need more drivers. Not as many as you would have additional vehicles, because with shorter routes the same driver could cover two of them in the same time. But if you're all out of CDL drivers and there are a surplus of, effectively, Uber drivers, then that goes the other way, right?
- cmeacham98 5y ago
  If you're going to hire more drivers, might as well instead pay your existing drivers more. You'll get drivers that are more skilled and care more. Do you really want the equivalent of an Uber driver taking your kid to school each day?
  - dstaley 5y ago
    I think the idea is just a larger number of drivers driving smaller, typical vehicles, not literally using Uber/ride-share drivers.
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    > If you're going to hire more drivers, might as well instead pay your existing drivers more. They already get paid more than Uber drivers. The problem is that "more" isn't enough right now, and there comes a point where the alternative is less expensive. > You'll get drivers that are more skilled and care more. There isn't a "caring" section on the CDL test. Why is the assumption that anyone without a CDL is some kind of negligent drug addict?
    - cmeacham98 5y ago
      The assumption is that drivers that are paid more are more caring.
Supermancho 5y ago
This is accurate.

egypturnash 5y ago

Huh, I'm surprised, my initial guess of "pays like shit" wasn't the primary reason - "bus driving has been privatized and the for-profit bus companies laid everyone off for C19" was the main one, with a chaser of "doesn't pay as well as other driving jobs".

gruez 5y ago
>"bus driving has been privatized and the for-profit bus companies laid everyone off for C19" was the main one To be fair, they'd be happy to keep the drivers on the payroll if the schools continued to pay for their service.
- egypturnash 5y ago
  Sure can't use any of the $173 million they made in profit last year, though.
  - gruez 5y ago
    They could, but they don't because it's not their responsibility. Likewise, should we shame rich silicon valley knowledge workers because they didn't pay to keep their local restaurants afloat during the pandemic?
    - egypturnash 5y ago
      No, but we should shame the rich silicon valley workers for participating in the same kind of relentless race to find perfectly functioning systems that they can wedge themselves into the middle of and extract profit from while making life for everyone else a little shittier, just as we should shame the for-profit bus companies. Oh, and we should also shame the elected officials that keep on cutting the amount of money being given to public education. And possibly everyone who votes for them, as well.
      - gruez 5y ago
        >No Why not? They're private entities too, with plenty of money to keep the neighborhood resturant from having to shut down. Or better yet, pay their babysitter/dog walker even though they don't need their services? >but we should shame the rich silicon valley workers for participating in the same kind of relentless race to find perfectly functioning systems that they can wedge themselves into the middle of and extract profit from while making life for everyone else a little shittier I fail to see how this applies for someone working for FAANG. >just as we should shame the for-profit bus companies. No, we shouldn't, because that's not their job. There's a clear delineation of what's the private sector's responsibility and what's the governments. I sure as hell don't want my pandemic stimulus checks to depend on whether I happened to work for a well-off company or not. >we should also shame the elected officials that keep on cutting the amount of money being given to public education US has above-average per-pupil spending compared to other OECD countries. I doubt money is actually an issue. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/figures/CMD/Figure_3_CMD-flat.svg https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/figures/CMD/Figure_3_CMD-fl...

silisili 5y ago

The article mainly focuses on pay. And that's true, bus drivers need and deserve way, way more money. Anyone with a CDL can go out and make 6 digits without much trouble. Yet they want people to do it for 1/4 the money. In addition to more money, they need more power to throw kids off the bus or ban them outright. Today they must just tolerate kids cussing you out, throwing things at you, and oftentimes trying to physically assault you. You wouldn't believe the awful things I saw on a public schoolbus. You'd have to be insane to sign up for that in current conditions.

sys_64738 5y ago

Is this similar to the HGV issues Britain is having with food and fuel shortages? Nobody to deliver it.

makomk 5y ago
Very similar. Part of the story here seems to be that the US also has shortages of HGV drivers that have also caused issues like fuel stations having to close: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-02/a-trucking-crisis-has-the-u-s-looking-for-more-drivers-abroad https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-02/a-truckin... Since it's basically the same license to drive a school bus or a truck, all those drivers can now get plenty of better-paying work. (As far as I can tell, the only reason this hasn't turned into a full-on fuel crisis like in the UK is because it hasn't been featured on the front page of the American equivalent of the BBC and the Sun, which means the US hasn't had the large-scale panic buying the UK did. Nearly all the examples of petrol stations running out of fuel here are due to massively increased demand rather than an underlying lack of supply; they just don't have the infrastructure to cope with everyone deciding to fill their tanks full at once even if everything's running perfectly. I've seen hints that there are empty shop shelves in the US too from people there complaining about it, but that doesn't have news coverage at all.)

unanswered 5y ago

America has an everything shortage because we shut down the damn country for a bad variant of the common cold.

kayodelycaon 5y ago

There isn’t a labor shortage. There’s a shortage of people willing to be abused and exploited. I don’t think any amount of money would be enough for me to work with retail customers again. Much less unruly kids that you can’t do anything about. If it’s between your story and the story the kid told their parents, you’ll lose that battle most of the time and likely end up getting yourself in more trouble than you already were. As soon as the customer stops being always right, we can talk about pay.

animal_spirits 5y ago
> I don’t think any amount of money would be enough for me to work with retail customers again. That _really_ depends on how much money you currently have.
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  There are a lot of options I could and would take before working with the public. Many people have done just that.
gruez 5y ago
> There isn’t a labor shortage. There’s a shortage of people willing to be abused and exploited. and those "abused and exploited" people are providing the labor, leading to a labor shortage. I don't understand people who think "shortage" need to be qualified by how sympathetic the reason for the shortage is. You can either be the type of person who thinks any failure to meet demand is a shortage, or that shortages don't exist because people can simply pay more. The in-between of "there's a failure to meet demand but they deserve it so it's not really a shortage" seems like trying to inject subjectivity to an objective word.
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  The people saying there is a shortage of workers aren’t using the dictionary definitions. There is a shortage of people willing to accept their terms. There isn’t a shortage of people who want to work.

rgbrenner 5y ago

"There's a lot of downtime during the day that you don't get paid for. You might work a 10-hour day, but you only get compensated for your shifts. .... [Corey Ford] as a driver, he earned $19/hr, which works out to a pre-tax income of ~$19.4k for 180 days of 5-hour shifts." Imagine a job that required your entire day, but they decided not to pay you during the late morning through the early afternoon. This has got to be one of the worst paying jobs in the country. I'm surprised they could fill their roles during normal times.

monkeybutton 5y ago
Part time hours but fulltime availability! What a complete scam. My spouse working in healthcare ran into this at one job. It didn't last long. And they wondered why employee retention was miserable. What's even the point of working at a place that demands such unpaid concessions? Those hours represent an opportunity cost and should be paid for. They are not free.
CapitalistCartr 5y ago
Waiting tables often have "split shifts".
- windlep 5y ago
  Maybe not a surprise that they also have trouble getting employee's right now?
- effingwewt 5y ago
  Also, sending people home whenever they feel like it/are slow. Some places have made this illegal but it still happens all the time. Try pulling that on the emlloywr though and see how quickly you are fired. The imbalances we put up with are maybe getting ironed out.
mhb 5y ago
OK. But you left out this part ...he realized that he made more money off of unemployment benefits (~$2k/month) than he did as a bus driver.

Limb 5y ago

I have a Class B CDL (with a medical cert restriction since it was for a state job, meaning no commerical jobs unless I get a medical done. I presume driving a school bus would be exempt for this) in New York. I guess I was one of the "500k+" people targeted by NYS, as I received an email asking me to apply to be a school bus driver. I gave it a quick thought before realizing that I work a 9 to 5 job, so there was no way I could even work the job if I wanted to. Besides the other good reasons mentioned in the article and this thread, I'm sure that also restricts the number of applicants because most people can't work during those hours unless they are retired or unemployed.

TedShiller 5y ago

There is no labor shortage. There's currently an excess of unemployment benefits. There's no point in working when you make less than not working.

InvertedRhodium 5y ago
Sounds like a wage shortage is also a possible explanation.
- TedShiller 5y ago
  Sure, benefits currently exceed wages. You can't blame them for not working, it's the rational thing to do.
eigengrau5150 5y ago
> There's currently an excess of unemployment benefits. If unemployment pays better than working, then workers aren't getting paid enough. The solution is not to cut unemployment benefits.
- TedShiller 5y ago
  I never claimed cutting benefits is the solution.
  - eigengrau5150 5y ago
    No, but I've seen plenty of people imply such when claiming that unemployment paid better than working.
    - TedShiller 5y ago
      Got it. I personally wouldn't work either if pay was that low.

akoluthic 5y ago

In our local district, rather than have individual buses for elementary, middle school, etc., they are having one driver pick up the elementary kids, drop them off, the go back out and pick up the older kids. They had to change the start times for elementary and high school to make this work, and they're also paying the drivers more, but it seems to be working. One issue is that if a single driver goes down (illness, etc.) it's a huge hit to logistics, and subs are hard to come by. But mostly they've made it work.

ghoward 5y ago
Not saying you're wrong, but... The district I am in does that, and they cannot find enough drivers at all.

PebblesRox 5y ago

"We've spent decades closing neighborhood schools, consolidating schools in unwalkable locations, and making our communities more dangerous places for kids to walk and bike, all while public transportation became less frequent and less available. As late as 1969, about half of kids under 15 usually walked or bicycled to school. By 2009, the figure was 13 percent." https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/9/23/the-school-bus-driver-shortage-is-a-problem-we-didnt-have-to-have https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/9/23/the-school-bus...

TedShiller 5y ago

There is also no "shortage" of materials like microchips. Those are all just fancy ways of saying INFLATION. If you pay enough, you'll get those microchips delivered to wherever you want by tomorrow morning, trust me. That's how the world works, like it or not.

hiptobecubic 5y ago
I feel like you don't know what the word "shortage" is for.
- TedShiller 5y ago
  You may feel that, but that doesn't mean everyone does.