As schools brought students back into the classroom at the start of the semester under new COVID-19 pandemic protocols, they were met with a shortage of bus drivers. As the semester winds down, Springfield School District 186 reports fewer delays, but an ongoing shortage of drivers that sometimes results in doubled-up routes when drivers call in sick, or canceled field trips for lack of transportation. It’s an ongoing issue with ties to the pandemic and the Great Resignation that economists say it’s inspired.
“We have a handful of vacant routes that are still being combined, but some of the doubled-up routes from the beginning of the year have been restored,” said Bree Hankins, public relations coordinator for the district. “We continue to experience delays, and our schools communicate that information directly to families.”
There was a lot of covering for other drivers at the beginning of the year, said Richard Lopez with First Student, who has driven school buses on and off for 25 years. He said most routes are fully covered now, but that it sometimes involves drivers handling more than their original workload. Field trips also occasionally can’t find a driver, he said.
“Sometimes drivers have to do a run involving driving to an extra school in the morning or in the afternoon. Sometimes we combine routes,” he said. “We do everything we have to do to get kids to school on time.”
Field trips and athletic events that require drivers to transport students at irregular hours are handled through a bidding process with First Student, Hankins said. She said the district has been able to provide transportation for about 90% of athletic events. As of Friday, First Student’s online hiring portal listed open positions in Springfield for a part-time bus driver at $19 per hour with a $2,000 signing bonus and a bus monitor at $12 per hour.
For David Johnson, who recently ended his employment as a part-time bus driver with Rochester Community Unit School District 3A, events like field trips and athletic events were among his reasons for leaving. He said a much-touted increase in rates intended to persuade more drivers to sign on for such assignments wasn’t all it was cracked up to be: A higher rate of $15 per hour only applied to driving time. The rest of the idle time a driver would spend waiting for the trip to wrap up was still only paid at $11 per hour, Johnson said. Out-of-town athletic conferences can keep drivers away from home from the early morning until well into the evening, he said, with the increased rate amounting to very little.
Johnson, who already works as a pastor at South Fork Church of Christ in Rochester, said he ultimately did not need the job and couldn’t always work around the schedule. The gap between morning runs and afternoon runs is not exactly a flexible time frame, he said. Those factors, along with an increase in wages in other parts of the service economy, may also be contributing to some drivers choosing to leave or not apply. For others, though, it’s a tough job they have to keep working.
“I think some people say, ‘If I can make $15 an hour without going through random drug testing and maintaining a CDL license, and without putting up with the kids and the administration, I’d rather fry hamburgers,'” Johnson said. “I think it really depends on why the person was driving the bus in the first place. Is it an ‘I have to do this’? Single moms are trying to live off of this job and they have to go to a second or third job to make a living.”
Safety is also on drivers’ minds. The Illinois Department of Public Health aggregates data from the state’s contact tracers on possible locations of COVID exposure, which includes categories such as restaurant or bar, hospital, office setting and school. Though each individual case may be attributed to multiple categories based on someone’s movements within 14 days of their case being reported, school is overwhelmingly the category most often cited, accounting for 38.9% of locations associated with COVID cases. The next largest category besides “other” (7%) is hospitals or clinics (6.6%).
Lopez said COVID safety is at the top of his mind while transporting students.
“I try to social distance as much as possible on the bus, one to a seat unless I’ve reached the point where I have to put two to a seat,” he said. “I can tell the kids don’t like the isolation. They’d rather be together and talk, but we do what we’ve got to do.”
Lopez said the onset of the pandemic did coincide with many drivers leaving. Many drivers are like Lopez himself, a semi-retiree with decades under his belt as a driver. He said the terms of his employment work for him – at least $19 an hour for a guaranteed 20-hour work week that has its challenges and its rewards. He said the profession doesn’t always attract or retain younger people, though.
“Most of the ones who have been at it have been at it for a while,” he said. “I’ve seen people get hired on, go through all the training, work one day and then hand in the keys and say, ‘Thanks, I’m not coming back.'”
Kenneth Lowe is a staff writer for Illinois Times. He can be reached at klowe@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in The missing moderates.
