'Nowhere else to go': All Wake school bus routes covered, but some students will be late

All school bus routes will be covered this school year under a new plan proposed by the Wake County Public School System, but more than 2,000 students will end up being late to school until more drivers are hired.

The school system likely needs 20 to 30 new bus drivers — and have no turnover — before it can commit to getting everyone to school on time, Senior Director of Transportation Bob Snidemiller told school board members Tuesday.

"This will be the plan until we can add more bus drivers," Snidemiller said. "There is really nowhere else to go."

The school system is currently onboarding 16 new driver candidates through district or state Division of Motor Vehicles training, up from nine earlier this month. Many more have applied. The hiring process can take up to a month.

The number of school bus-certified drivers in North Carolina is plummeting as public agencies nationwide struggle to attract drivers and private businesses are pushing wages upward — in the transportation and delivery industry and beyond — in a hiring frenzy.

The system presented its plan to the school board at a meeting Tuesday, two weeks after board members rejected the system's earlier proposal to leave some routes uncovered regularly.

Board members didn't reject the new plan but expressed numerous concerns that students who arrive at school late would suffer academically, and in comparison to their peers, and questioned whether the school system was not inviting enough to bus driver applicants.

"Those students are missing all of the information they need to go on with that lesson" when they arrive to school late, Board Member Cheryl Caulfield said. "It’s almost like that entire lesson they’ll just be playing catch-up."

Superintendent Randy Bridges said principals will know which students will be affected and can look into providing extra help to students who are late.

Board Member Tyler Swanson also questioned the district's rule of, on its website, discouraging people with a traffic violation, such as a speeding ticket, from applying to become bus drivers. He said he looked at nearby school system's websites and found they did not state that.

"Are we saying that if you get a ticket five months ago you’re not good but if you get a ticket 13 months ago you’re good to go?" Board Member Sam Hershey asked. "Are we suggesting that one speeding ticket in 10 years may somehow make someone not qualified to drive our kids if they got it more recently than a year ago?"

It's a district rule, and Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources A.J. Mutillo said the district can re-evaluate its requirements before the next board meeting.

The district is also looking at systemic changes and long-term it can make amid a national bus driver shortage to be more reliable and more nimble when a driver calls out sick.

Parents and neighbors have often been left to figure out their own transportation when the bus can't come.

Luis Perez, a parent of two children in the school system, fills his SUV with kids when the bus can't come, spending his money on gas, using his work lunch hour and jeopardizing getting his work done during the work day.

"It was outrageous," he said. He couldn't fit every child who needed a ride to school. "They'd turn around, go back home, try to find another ride."

Perez is hoping the school system can hold on to the bus drivers it has.

Covering all routes

The school system is providing daily bus service with the same number of drivers it reported having earlier this month — 560 drivers — when it said it couldn’t cover all 577 routes. The school system will do this by reducing routes to 560 and lifting their “on-time” arrival practice when necessary to make sure a route is covered.

Some of the existing bus drivers would add another route to their schedule at a handful of schools.

That means 3,157 students — at unnamed schools — would be dropped off after the morning bell signaling the start of classes. Another 7,885 students would arrive only 10 minutes before the morning bell.

Of the students who would arrive late, 1,446 students would arrive one minute to 10 minutes late, 1,008 students would arrive 11 minutes to 20 minutes late, 481 students would arrive 21 minutes to 30 minutes late, and 222 students would arrive more than 30 minutes late.

About the same number of students -- and many of the same students -- will also be picked up late from school, as many as 40 minutes after the final school bell rings, said Mark Strickland, district chief of facilities and operations.

"This was the best solution that we could come up with," Strickland said. "Obviously it's better to get them to school a little late than not at all."

About 90,000 students, out of the system's nearly 160,000 total students, have signed up for busing.

Families will be notified of their assigned routes by Friday, spokeswoman Sara Clark said, and they will be notified if their children are among those who will arrive late.

The district is also working on improving communication with parents, including messaging outside of the Here Comes the Bus App, spokeswoman Lisa Luten said. It will require software upgrades, but they are a top priority, Luten said.

The plan does not reduce the potential impact of drivers calling out sick, which leads to bus cancelations or delays. A 10% absentee rate would leave 6,000 students with a late or missing bus. Families will be notified of cancelations and delays.

The district doesn't have substitutes for driver routes, if a driver called out sick. It has a backup plan for covering uncovered elementary school routes; drivers of buses for high schools or middle schools, which start the school day earlier, would pick up elementary school students once their regular routes are over.

But the district is still working to hire more drivers and is optimistic some efforts are working, such as providing extra pay for school staff that sign up to be bus monitors, helping to manage student behavior.

The district is offering stipends for students who use third-party busing, namely students with special needs or who don’t have a permanent home. Vendors have experienced shortages in drivers, as well.

About 540 families have applied for those stipends, which Snidemiller said has helped them ensure all students on those vendor routes have a driver. That was not the case last August, when a lack of drivers on some routes prompted the district to begin offering the stipend.

Hiring efforts

The Wake County school system and others have been raising driver pay using local funding in the past two years. In Wake County, starting wages have risen from $15 per hour to $17.20 per hour.

Wake County has also added a second attendance bonuses for drivers of $200 for every perfect month and proved signing bonuses for new drivers of $1,200.

Bus driver starting pay in Wake County was set to increase from $17.20 per hour to $17.89 per hour this school year, and pay for all years of experience was set to rise by 4%. The school board hasn’t funded their pay raises yet, or the raises anyone else is scheduled receive, either. That's because the school boars is operating on last year's budget while it awaits a new state budget.

The planned-for raise in the school board’s budget could amount to about $1,000 or more for bus drivers in a 10-month contract. Average bus driver pay in the district is just more than $24,000.

A rejected proposal

With less than two weeks until the first day of school, parents and students have been anticipating an update about the bus driver shortage and how students would get to school.

A couple of weeks ago, WRAL News reported there were 17 bus routes without a full-time driver, which had meant around 2,000 students wouldn't have had normal bus transportation at the start of the school year.

At the time, the school system had a plan to use substitute drivers to pick up elementary school students each day as needed, but middle and high school students would get service every other week. Schools had also said they planned to prioritize higher-needs middle and high schools, where students may struggle to get their own transportation.

In July, Wake County also asked parents to drive students to school if possible.

WRAL anchor/reporter Eric Miller contributed to this report.