In Fort Worth schools, the buses run on time. But a driver shortage lingers.

Last year, the Fort Worth Independent School District was so short of bus drivers that students regularly showed up hours late to school while they waited for their bus to arrive.

This year, the district has streamlined its routes and enlisted any operations staff members who have commercial driver’s licenses to drive buses. That means bus service has been more reliable this year than it was last year. But it doesn’t mean the staffing shortage has been resolved.

“I think it’s more fair to say that we have adapted as successfully as I could have hoped,” said Joe Coburn, the district’s chief of operations.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, districts across Texas and nationwide have struggled to recruit enough drivers to get their students to school on time. But the director of a state student transportation organization said finding good bus drivers was always a challenge, even before the pandemic created extra roadblocks.

Fort Worth school district overhauled bus routes

Last year, district officials said the driver shortage was so severe that even if every driver on the district’s payroll showed up to work, 40 bus routes were still left without a driver. That meant that drivers would finish their routes, then go back and to drive the routes that didn’t have a driver.

Teachers in the district told the Star-Telegram last year that they regularly had students show up hours late to class because their bus either arrived late, or never showed up at all. They said they sometimes got emails halfway through the school day telling them to warn their students that their afternoon bus would be hours late that day, and advising them to find another ride home, if possible. This year, the district’s operations staff generally has a better idea of what to expect from one day to the next, Coburn said, so those unplanned disruptions are much rarer.

Over the summer, the district operations department revamped its bus routes to try to make them more efficient, so they could be completed with fewer drivers. While both changes have allowed the district to keep the buses running on time most of the time, Coburn acknowledged that they also shifted some of the burden onto students and their families. Sometimes, students have to walk farther to get to the bus stop, or have to catch the bus earlier than they did last year. Some of the afternoon routes have a built-in delay, meaning buses aren’t scheduled to pick students up until a half hour or so after school ends. That means those students get home from school later than they would otherwise.

The district also stepped up recruiting efforts. Currently, the district has about 40 vacant bus driver positions, with 10 new hires being processed. Last spring, the district had about 100 open driver positions. Fort Worth ISD pays drivers $22.50 an hour.

Even with more drivers on staff this year, the department still has to ask other operations staff members to drive buses, Coburn said. That isn’t ideal, he said, because those people have other work they’re supposed to be doing. The district is also short on bus mechanics, he said, and some of those it does have spend part of their days driving buses instead of repairing them. The operations department worked overtime all summer to make sure the bus fleet was ready for the first day of school, he said. But now, the mechanics are struggling to keep up with preventative maintenance, he said.

“Everybody’s just stretching themselves thin,” he said. “But right now, we’re hanging on.”

Most districts face bus driver shortages

The shortage of bus drivers isn’t unique to Fort Worth. In a survey fielded by the Edweek Research Center in July, 86% of district leaders surveyed told researchers they didn’t have enough bus driver applicants to cover their districts’ needs.

Those shortages have forced some districts to cut back on service. Lake Travis ISD, a fast-growing district west of Austin, started the year with almost half of its bus driver positions vacant. To cope with those vacancies, the district made major changes to its bus schedules over the summer: Students who live within a two-mile radius of their schools don’t have bus service at all, while those who live farther out only have bus service on alternating weeks. On the off weeks, parents are left to find another way to get their kids to school.

In a letter to parents, Brad Bailey, the district’s assistant superintendent of operations, acknowledged the move would be unpopular, but said it was the most realistic way for the district to deal with the shortage of bus drivers, combined with an anticipated increase in student ridership. Bailey encouraged anyone interested in driving a bus to get in touch with the district.

In St. Louis, school officials announced last month that the district would suspend bus routes to six high schools and two elementary schools, leaving more than 3,000 students without bus service for the first two weeks of the school year. Students at high schools that were affected by the change could get metro bus passes from the district. In an Aug. 15 press conference, St. Louis Superintendent Kelvin Adams said the district was 30-40 bus drivers short every day last year. On Sept. 2, the district sent an email to parents saying the contractor it uses for bus services hired enough to restore service to about a third of the students who had been without transportation since the beginning of the year.

Elsewhere, the shortage has forced school leaders to find creative solutions. Earlier this month, the Hawaii State Department of Education announced a pilot program allowing high school students on four islands to apply for free county bus passes through their schools. The passes will be valid through July 2023. In a news release, Hawaii Superintendent Keith Hayashi said the department, which operates essentially as a statewide school district, started the school year down by about 90 bus drivers. The move would allow the department to reassign buses from high schools to elementary and intermediate schools, Hayashi said, easing the burden on the state’s school bus system.

In Charlottesville, Virginia, only about 900 of the district’s 4,500 students started the school year with bus service, according to Virginia Public Media. So the district expanded its “walking zones” — areas around each campus in which students are expected to walk or find another ride to school — and began using so-called walking school buses, which are large groups of students who walk to school single-file, accompanied by teachers or other adults.

Recruiting challenges predate the pandemic

Marisa Weisinger, executive director of the Texas Association for Pupil Transportation, said the pandemic exacerbated a long-standing shortage of school bus drivers, but it didn’t create it. Finding good candidates to be bus drivers has always been challenging, she said. Drivers have to be healthy, they have to have good driving records and they can’t have a criminal history, she said. Add to that the split shifts, long hours, difficult working conditions and a lack of support from school leaders with regard to student discipline, and it can be difficult for districts to attract and keep good bus drivers, she said.

Although the level of pay has never been bus drivers’ top concern about the job, Weisinger said it can also be an issue. Smaller districts that can’t afford to keep up with the larger neighbors in terms of pay may struggle to keep drivers, she said.

Before the pandemic, many school bus drivers across the state had retired after careers doing something else, then took jobs as bus drivers, either to make extra money, or because they weren’t ready to leave the workforce entirely. But when COVID-19 reached Texas, many of those drivers were of an age that placed them at increased risk, so they decided it seemed too risky to keep working, she said. Others had health issues that didn’t keep them from driving before the pandemic, but made them more susceptible to the virus, she said.

In the face of all those challenges, school districts across Texas are trying new ways to attract potential bus drivers, Weisinger said. Some have hosted ride-and-drive events, where they invite the public to come and try their hand at driving a school bus in an enclosed environment like a parking lot, she said. Giving people that opportunity, coupled with an explanation of the kinds of training they would get before being put onto a route, can help people get past their concerns about driving such a big vehicle, she said.

“When you sit in the seat and you look in the rear-view mirror and you see all those seats back there, it can be very daunting,” she said.

Some districts have begun requiring that coaches and band directors drive their own buses to out-of-town events, she said. Others have found ways to have other district employees, like cafeteria or maintenance workers, drive bus routes either before or after their other duties. Some districts have also had their bus mechanics pick up bus routes, she said, but that cuts back on productivity because it means those mechanics are unavailable to do repairs and routine maintenance on the buses.

Despite the challenges of the job, working as a bus driver can be rewarding, Weisinger said. Bus drivers are the first ones who kids see on their way to school in the morning, she said. Weisinger, who once served as the transportation director in two districts in the Houston area, said she often saw drivers come in after their routes smiling because a mother had baked them cookies or a student had drawn them a picture. Another benefit is that parents can come to work and bring their children on the bus with them, and they’re off work in summers and during school breaks, meaning they don’t have to find child care while their children are out of school, she said.

One of the most rewarding aspects of the job for bus drivers is knowing that they’re part of the educational process for the students they drive to school. That’s especially true for drivers who work with special-needs students, she said.

“If it weren’t for them, those children might not even have access to education,” she said. “...It’s just very, very rewarding.”