Without the extra help, Chicago district officials said they will be forced to limit bus services to students with diverse learning needs, students in temporary living situations and general education students who attend the same school as a diverse learner or sibling. Drivers there make between $20 and $25 an hour. "Hard to compete with that but an idea of just how intense the competition is for anyone with a commercial driver's license." Limiting bus servicesĬhicago Public Schools has about 681 bus drivers on staff but still need another 1,300 - ideally before the first day begins on August 21, CBS News Chicago reported. "To give you an idea of how competitive the market is, we recently lost a driver to a private business that gave the driver, as an incentive, a rent-free home," he said. Marie Bundrum has been a bus driver for 23 years and said. The shortage could impact bus arrival times. The Osceola County school district held their first day of ‘Welcome Back Training’ for bus drivers Monday. Updated 11:51AM Osceola County FOX 35 Orlando Osceola schools brace for influx of bus driver sick calls Students in Osceola County could see their buses delayed today as the district. Despite that move, it's tough to hire drivers because most of them are opting for higher-paying jobs with better benefits, he added. According to Osceola County Schools, the district is expecting a lower amount of bus drivers to be working on Friday, March 10. Giaramita said the district's driver shortage started during the pandemic but has continued, even though officials have raised driver salaries to roughly $21 an hour. School’s out for summer but the job doesn’t stop for Osceola County school leaders. Students who live on these routes have been placed on a waiting list until new drivers can be hired or we can reconfigure bus routes." "This means 12 routes are open, with no driver assigned. "Fully staffed, we need about 160 bus drivers and we currently are short by about 12," Phil Giaramita, a district spokesman, told CBS MoneyWatch. Orlando Weather: Storm alerts, live interactive radar, forecast, and moreĬlick here for the latest Central Florida news, Florida stories, and local headlines.The driver shortage in Albemarle County Public Schools in Charlottesville, Virginia is in part due to an extra 3,000 students requesting bus transportation for this upcoming year. Right now, starting pay for bus drivers in Osceola is $13.85 an hour, but the district hopes that will be up to $15 starting in July. "We have a hiring fair almost every month, sometimes twice a month and unfortunately many people come in, but they realize that this isn’t for them, or they just don’t qualify for the very strict requirements." "Our recruiting efforts have been lean so to speak," Creach said. Already short on bus route drivers, Clarke Community Schools is looking to district family members and the community for help. The purpose of the Safe Driver Plan is to establish a policy that promotes safe driving practices for Pinellas County. Osceola has been working to recruit more drivers, holding monthly job fairs, offering bonuses and putting bus attendants with drivers to watch the students.īut like other districts, hiring has been slower than they hoped. Provides leadership, assistance, and training for school districts and other clients to ensure safe and efficient transportation of Florida's public school students. "In other words, there are 30 routes out there that don’t have a daily assigned driver to them." In the meantime, the Osceola County school district is considering a partnership with Lynx to help transport high school students to and from school. With the current driver shortage, officials say that puts between 8,000 and 9,000 students on different buses to make it. "Generally, in other times, we can cover that fairly easily with substitute drivers and creative routing, but the problem is right now we’re down more than 30 bus drivers," Creach said. In Osceola County, school buses transport around 23,000 students each day. Creach says they have 242 runs to make each day, but they only have 212 drivers.Īround 27,000 students rely on rides, that's up about 4,000 from the last school year.
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