Bus Driver Shortage Forces Schools to Cut Service, Pay Parents to Transport Kids

The School District of Philadelphia is paying families $300 a month to opt out of the school bus system and transport their children to and from school. More than 8,500 families have signed up for the program for the current school year, said Monique Braxton, a spokeswoman for the district. The move is expected to cost the district $31.2 million this school year.

The program helps relieve the strain on the school’s bus system, Braxton said. The district employs about 200 bus drivers but has about 100 open positions, she said. The district had nearly 200,000 students last year.

“If your child’s school is on the way to your work, this is a win-win," Braxton said.

Staffing for school bus drivers, like many other professions, fell during the Covid-19 pandemic and has yet to bounce back in many parts of the country. Some districts are cutting bus routes to deal with the shortages, while others are trying to recruit more drivers.

Another pressure on the industry is job hopping, which has become more common, especially since the pandemic, said Molly McGee-Hewitt, executive director of the National Association for Pupil Transportation, a trade association for the school-bus transportation industry.

“People don’t seem to stay in positions as long as they used to," McGee-Hewitt said.

In Kentucky, school bus service for Jefferson County Public Schools got off to a chaotic start this year. The district was forced to cancel classes for more than a week after a disastrous first day of school where some students got home as late as 10 p.m. due to bus delays. It has 578 bus drivers, nearly half what it did eight years ago.

The district now has an app that allows parents to track their children’s buses in real time, a spokesperson said. The district, which includes Louisville, has put in place short-term fixes that are getting a majority of students to their bus stops by 6:30 p.m., the spokesperson said.

The district is considering slashing bus service. The district’s school board also approved a measure Tuesday that would pay parents of preschool students $5 a day, or about $100 a month, to transport their children to school.

“I think we have real concerns, educationally, across America in the future of bus transportation," said district superintendent Martin Pollio at a recent school board meeting. “I talked to colleagues all across the nation facing the same thing right now."

Berkley Collins said her daughter, who is in first grade, missed several days of class at the beginning of the school year because of the busing problems. It took two weeks for the elementary school to assign her daughter to a bus route, and Collins said she had no other way to get her to her school, which is about a 20- to 30-minute drive away.

“I was in a panic," said Collins, 34 years old.

Collins said she’s worried about losing bus service for her other daughter, who is in sixth grade, if the district cuts routes. The school district is legally obligated to transport her first-grader to school because she has a medical condition, she said. But her sixth-grader could have her bus route cut, leaving Collins scrambling to get her to class.

“Am I going to have to choose my career over keeping my kids in the school we can have them go to for free with higher-quality education?" said Collins, who works as a mortgage-loan officer.

In Chicago, the shortage continues to disrupt school bus service. Chicago Public Schools had 678 bus drivers as of early September, about half the amount needed to provide bus service to all eligible students, the district said. It had more than 300,000 students last year.

Officials said the district is giving priority to students with special needs or those in temporary living situations. It is also giving free-transit cards for bus and train service to eligible general-education students. About 1,300 families are using the free-transit cards, the district said.

The shortages have been uneven across the U.S., said Curt Macysyn, executive director of the National School Transportation Association, which represents school bus contractors.

Some districts are faring better, often due to favorable local job market conditions and concerted efforts to recruit and retain drivers, Macysyn said.

This school year, the Boston Public Schools district is fully staffed with 740 bus drivers for the first time since the pandemic, said Max Baker, a spokesman for the district. Baker attributed the recruitment success to higher wages and better working conditions.

“This will enable our students to have better, more efficient transportation to and from school," Baker said.

A new contract between the district’s schools, which have more than 54,000 students, and a school bus company raised wages to $29.13 an hour, a 9% increase, Baker said. The contract also increased the minimum guaranteed weekly hours for bus drivers from 25 to 31. The district also pays for the training required to obtain a commercial driver’s license.

A union representing school bus drivers in New York City reached a tentative agreement with busing companies earlier this month, averting the possibility of a strike, labor leaders said. The union said the agreement covers five school bus companies and will ensure that more than 85,000 school bus riders in the city won’t see a disruption of service. The union said the agreement secured wage increases but didn’t disclose details.

Districts need to work year-round on hiring and retaining bus drivers to stay competitive, said McGee-Hewitt of the National Association for Pupil Transportation. Even then, it can still be a challenge to have enough drivers to provide transportation to all eligible students, she said.

In Kentucky, Pollio, the superintendent, said providing full bus service to a district with 96,000 students is no longer tenable.

“I think the community needs to know that the days of all students being transported to all schools is at the end of that road," Pollio said. “We are just going to have to have discussions about what that will look like."

Write to Joseph De Avila at joseph.deavila@wsj.com