Superintendent: Wake bus driver shortage won't resolve this year, prolonging morning stress for parents

“This will not be solved before the end of this year,” Superintendent Catty Moore said. The onboarding process, including applying for a Commercial Driver’s License, takes too long, she said.

The problem persists, despite efforts by the board to raise pay by more than $2 per hour in the past year and a half.

But student discipline appears to be a consistent problem worth addressing, Board Member Cheryl Caulfield said.

“It seems to keep coming back to the table,” Caulfield said.

The district’s bus driver shortage has never been this extreme before, said David Neter, the district’s chief business officer.

“We’ve had challenges in hiring bus drivers for a decade,” he said, but it’s gotten much worse in the last few years.

“Obviously the vacancy rate for bus drivers is very concerning,” Board Member Chris Heagarty said.

He noted some positive news in vacancy rates improving for other professions.

“That’s something a lot of sectors of the economy aren’t seeing,” Heagarty said.

Meanwhile, Heagarty said, the board must make other policy decisions — such as not changing school start or end times — based on driver limitations.

The board is so far not scheduled to vote on any items related to its vacancy numbers.

But the board will review potential attendance bonuses for employees during a meeting March 21. Part of the shortage is exacerbated when employees are absent for any reason.

Over the past year and a half, the school system has raised hourly starting pay for busing drivers from $15 to $17.20, with a $1,200 hiring bonus for new drivers. That’s a higher starting pay than in neighboring counties except for Durham Public Schools, where drivers start at $18.13 per hour, and Johnston County, where drivers start at $17.50 per hour but don’t move up the pay scale.

The vacancy rates for instructional assistants and child nutrition service workers have improved following minimum pay increases of several dollars per hour, but the same has not has not occurred for bus drivers.

But according to data presented Tuesday, the Wake County Public School System was short 285 bus drivers in February out of 882 bus driver positions — a 32.3% vacancy rate. Data show drivers quit at the end of the last school year, and the school system has been unable to replace them.

This fall, the district redrew its bus routes to require just 584 routes, each with their own driver, and 31 substitute drivers. That reduced the transportation system’s capacity to handle bus driver absences in half but set the district’s staffing goal at 615 drivers — the same number it reported having at the time. But new data show the district has 597 drivers now, leaving it 18 drivers short of that goal

Vacancy rates have been relatively stable across some other categories regularly reported by the district.

The teacher vacancy rate hasn’t changed much from a year ago, staying around 2.5% after a brief rise to about 3%. However, the district’s teacher workforce includes more first-time teachers than in the past two years.

During the 2020-21 school year, the district employed 1,453 “beginning” teachers — teachers in their first three years. That rose to 1,711 the next year and is now 2,072 this year. The district has more than 11,000 teachers overall.

That’s coincided with a rise in teachers coming into the profession from “alternative” pathways — or a route other than an education bachelor’s degree. The district had 146 alternatively license teachers during the 2020-21 school year, 390 alternatively licensed teachers last year and employs 400 alternatively licensed teachers this year.

The district continues to pursue student teachers and its Future Teachers program, which promises to pay the professional development costs of Wake County students who go to college, get their education degree and return to the district as teachers. At the same time, the pool of college graduates with education degrees has been shrinking. The district is hosting fewer student-teachers this spring — 191 — than it did last spring, when it hosted 232.

The district has reduced its overall positions since last school year, affecting the vacancy rates. For example, the district had 777 child nutrition service positions, 695 of which were filled and 82 of which were vacant this February, about a 10.6% vacancy rate. In February 2022, the district had 837 child nutrition services positions, 715 of which were filled and 122 of which were vacant, about a 15.3% vacancy rate.

The district reported employing 11,382 teachers in February, down from 11,626 teachers last February. The vacancy rate is similar — 2.5% this year compared to 2.7% last February — because the overall number of teaching positions is down, from 11,951 last year to 11,767 this year.