Some Wake schools won't have regular bus service to start the year; school board members call it 'unacceptable'

Some Wake County students won’t have to worry about missing the bus at the start of the school year. Instead, they’ll have to worry about finding a ride in the first place.

The Wake County Public School System is reducing bus routes by seven, which still leaves 17 routes without a full-time driver so far. That means about 2,000 students — about 2% of the district’s riders — won’t have normal bus transportation to start the year, and some won't have it at all some days.

The scenario is prompting the school system to consider splitting several schools among substitute drivers, who would serve elementary schools every day but middle schools and high schools only every other week.

Elementary students on those routes would likely arrive at school or home late, which is unacceptable to some county school officials.

“Getting kids to school is foundational,” Board Member Monika Johnson-Hostler said. “To say we’re not going to have [a] bus for every kid in the school district is… embarrassing.”

The school system has yet to determine which schools would be affected but has said it plans to avoid including higher-needs middle and high schools, where students may struggle more to find their own transportation to school.

School board members on Tuesday urged the district to find another solution to prevent the planned missed bus service. Board members suggested consolidating stops or altering start times.

The school board received updates Tuesday during a work session on bus driver hiring and changes to recruitment, including a plan to make it possible for people to apply for a job on a mobile device. People currently can only fill out an interest form on a mobile device, which results in a follow-up call within one or two days.

Bus routes have been inconsistent in the past couple of school years because of driver unavailability. But missed routes weren’t intentional, unlike the proposal the school system made Tuesday.

School systems and municipalities nationwide are struggling with school bus driver and public transportation bus driver shortages. Prospective drivers have been lured by higher wages in the private sector for people with commercial drivers licenses, like those required for school bus drivers, at companies such as Amazon.

In North Carolina, data show thousands fewer commercial drivers license holders with school bus certification.

School bus drivers in Wake County earn $17.20 per hour and earn benefits. On a 10-month contract for 35-hour weeks, bus drivers largely earn less than $30,000 per year.

The school board has raised pay several times for drivers, from $13.11 per hour during the 2019-20 school year to $15 per hour during the 2020-21 school year, $16.20 per hour during the 2021-22 school year and $17.20 per hour last year. Without a new state budget for this current school year, it’s unclear whether bus driver wages will rise even higher.

The school system has offered attendance bonuses and hiring bonuses for the past few years, which could total $4,200 per year for a driver this year.

The district’s driver shortage has only worsened as wages have risen and bonuses have increased. About one-third of the district’s funded bus driver positions are vacant.

“We are investing a lot of money up front for very little return,” Johnson-Hostler said, as board members questioned whether bonuses, which are taxed at higher rates and don’t count toward benefits, are working.

The Wake County Public School System has 560 drivers for 577 routes, ahead of the Aug. 28 first day of school for traditional calendar schools, which serve more than 100,000 of the district’s roughly 160,000 students.

Another nine drivers are going through driver training. The district is also interviewing candidates for two new recruiter positions in its transportation department. They would recruit drivers and bus safety positions.

Training for a bus driver can take about 30 days, after which a driver can be assigned their own permanent bus route.

Board members questioned whether the hiring process itself was contributing to recruitment issues. While the school system now pays for new drivers to get their commercial drivers licenses, bus drivers won’t get their first paycheck until they’ve driven for the district for weeks. The state pays employees only once per month, but school systems — primarily funded by the state — have permission to alter their payment schedules to twice per month.

That can add up to more than a month without a paycheck, from application to hiring, for some drivers.

Board members called for that to change, saying it was an impediment to hiring compared to other industries. Board Member Sam Hershey said most people wouldn’t want to wait that long for a paycheck.

“If most of us here wouldn’t do it, we shouldn’t have the expectation that those of us we are hiring would,” Hershey said. “We have to change this.”

So far, about 90,000 students are signed up to ride the bus, even after the district asked parents to opt out if they did not absolutely need their child to ride it. That’s typical registration, according to the school system.