ANGOLA — After 36 years seated behind the wheel of a Metropolitan School District of Steuben County school bus, Dave Harpham retired last spring and handed over his keys to the school district’s transportation director.
This fall, Harpham is once back behind the steering wheel of an MSD bus, this time working as a substitute driver.
Around the area, the state, and the nation, school districts are struggling to find enough qualified, licensed drivers to drive the buses they need to put on the road to fulfill their school’s transportation needs. And there doesn’t appear to be any easy or quick solution to this problem.
East Noble Transportation Direction Joshua Buhro admitted he’s been spending almost as much time behind the wheel of a school bus as he does his corporation desk
“We’re constantly trying to train people, trying to get people to come and join us. It’s just kind of a never-ending process,” he said.
Thousands of students
Buhro oversees East Noble’s transportation department with a force of about 55 drivers. He calls that average for a school district the size of East Noble. Buhro said the corporation transports between 1,900 and 2,000 students a day.
“We’ve got a lot of buses on the road,” he explained.
The school system has at least two open routes, daily bus routes without permanent bus drivers. In order to make that work, Buhro said he, or his secretary, or a couple of other transpiration staff members have to cover those routes while he searches to find a replacement.
Westview transportation director Yvonne Eash said some students are now spending more time riding to and from school because of the problem.
“Right now, our routes are longer and our buses are fuller,” she explained.
Even relatively small school districts, like Hamilton, which have far fewer bus routes, are struggling to find substitute drivers.
Five routes still a challenge in Hamilton
By comparison, Hamilton operates five bus routes to East Noble’s 42. But Garry May, the school’s athletic director and transportation coordinator said he’s having a tough time finding a steady pool of substitute drivers available to step in on short notice when something pulls away the regular driver.
May admitted all area schools have worked hard to make sure students are getting to and from school each day, but the real challenge for transportation departments is getting students to after-school events like sports.
Both Buhro and Eash said it’s not uncommon now for those events to be pushed back 30 minutes to an hour as school officials wait for a driver to become available
“We’ve had to contact other schools and tell them there’s just no way we can get our kids there at a particular time because we don’t have drivers,” Eash said. “And we see the same thing on our end. We’ve had other schools call us and say ‘hey, can we start the game at 5:30, not 5?’ So everyone is being really flexible because you don’t want to take an opportunity away from the kids.”
May said his school district’s sports teams have started to rely more on its fleet of mini buses which can be driven by coaches once they pass all the required testing. Those buses don’t require a commercial driver’s license to drive. The drawback, however, is the smaller buses can only haul 12 people — 11 passengers and the driver — and many sports teams are larger than that.
Getting creative
Westview has started looking into creative options to offer bus drivers a second position within the school corporation, like maintenance jobs or as part of the kitchen staff, allowing them the time they need to drive a bus while at the same time, increasing their paid hours, as an option.
“We’re just trying to be flexible,” Eash said. “It’s tough.”
The shortage also is putting a lot of pressure on drivers who signed on to work as substitute drivers, most of whom are now working daily.
Eash said as the school year started, school officials had hoped to get back to education like it was before COVID-19, but the driver shortage makes that difficult.
“COVID was so hard. We had to stop field trips and those kinds of things, and we do want those to come back,” she said. “You don’t want to keep taking away the things that made school fun for the kids.”
Decent pay
Buhro and Eash said each of their school systems pays a good wage to drivers, comparable or better than other school districts in the area. But Eash said even higher wages offered at several local factories have lured drivers away from the school corporation.
So far, most school transportation departments have managed to keep the buses on the road and get students back and forth to school and sporting events. But Eash said that sometimes means she’s on the phone all day juggling schedules.
“We’ve just got to do the best we can with what we’ve got,” she said.
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