Nora de la Our writes in Jacobin magazine about the plight of school bus drivers. They are in short supply across the nation. She explains why.
The 2021–22 school year has been marked by severe transportation problems across US school districts. In a nationwide survey of those in the pupil transportation industry conducted in August, 78 percent of respondents said their district’s bus driver shortages are getting worse, with 51 percent describing the situation as “severe” or “desperate.”
As a result, students are facing hours-long commutes, and parents are interrupting their work days to wait in lengthy pickup lines where busing is either unavailable or severely delayed. In September, Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker activated the National Guard to drive kids to school in communities hard hit by COVID-19.
But while school bus driver shortages are more pronounced than in years past, they’re hardly new. Jacqueline Smith, a driver-dispatcher for Indian River County School District in Florida and vice president of transportation for her union local, told Jacobin that staffing shortages were causing her and her colleagues to do “double work” long before the pandemic.
According to annual survey data from School Bus Fleet magazine, more than half of US school districts have experienced driver shortages every year since at least 2006, and more than 70 percent of districts have experienced shortages for most of those years.
Why are US school systems plagued by chronic bus driver shortages? The reason isn’t that there’s a lack of jobseekers willing in theory to work as school bus drivers. It’s that pay and benefits are grossly incommensurate with the incredibly challenging, multifaceted work that school transportation entails.
This video accompanies the story.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There is no labor shortage. There is a surplus of crappy jobs for inadequate pay. I can assure you from recent experience that any halfway decent job still has hundreds of applicants and fills immediately.
exactly
I wonder if automation has moved us to a world where rewarding jobs are few.
Something to look forward to
When all the jobs are done
By robots, then the fun
Will only be in games
With Fornite in their names
It depends on what you consider “rewarding jobs”
Jobs like carpenter, plumber, electrician, farmer, car mechanic, chef etc will be around for quite a while. The robot that can get under a sink and do the assessment and fine manipulation required to fix a leaking pipe fitting is still pretty far off.
There is a general impression that white collar “knowledge worker” jobs are largely immune to replacement by bots, but that is actually not the case. In fact, it’s actually a much easier task to replace/automate a job like accountant, programmer or even radiologist than it is to automate a job like carpenter or plumber.
Like chess, rules based, repetitive jobs that are performed within a restricted “environment” are relatively easily automated. Jobs that encounter a lot of variation, unexpected problems and non standard movement and manipulation are difficult.
The daughter of a friend of mine recently graduated from Chicago law. At her orientation, when she started the program, one of the speakers told the new students that they were lucky they were studying at a prestigious school like Chicago because in the near future, most routine law services will be provided online by algorithms.
Not sure that it will really matter.
The law is the very definition of a rules (algorithm) based system and a computer database can include every law on the books.a and every level argument that has ever been made..
If we had robotic Supreme Court justices , we would probably have rulings that adhered much better go the Constitution.s and that were much less biased by ideology.
Rather than SCOTUS, it would be ROBOTUS
And one thing is certain: we wouldn’t be bearing “I like beer” at the confirmation bearings.
Then again if the robotic justices were anything like autocorrect, they would replace “hear” and “hearings” with “bear” and “bearings”, so maybe they would ng be all that great after sll
But once a robotic justice got in, they would be in forever, provided they were maintained and replacement parts were available.
SDP: You are correct about construction and maintenance. Teaching will always be a job done better by humans, but some do not really care whether teaching gets done, as we have often discussed here.
Some years ago, a friend of mine opined that we should be teaching the kids how to play the drums. After all, that would make them like Richard Feyman
There are also safer jobs than a school bus driver. Instead of driving a busload of children around, some with masks and some without, those drivers may want to switch to picking up food orders from markets like Whole Foods and deliver them to porches without the risk of dealing with the unmasked mob and their children.
There has also been an increased demands for drivers from Amazon, FedEx, and UPS that probably pays a lot more per hour than public school bus drivers earn.
A few weeks a go I spent a moment checking the facts from the government agency that reports how many people work in which industry and jobs for companies like Amazon’s delivery service, Fed Ex and UPS had increased from about 500,000 before the pandemic to more than 750,000 since the pandemic.
Driving a bus is a tremendous responsibility. It is often associated with low pay and awkward part-time hours of service. Privatization of this important job has resulted in more drivers leaving their positions due to poor pay and benefits. Since it is an important position, it should be a public job with decent pay and benefits. It can also be made a full-time job if the position is rolled in with other municipal duties like maintaining parks or other transportation assignments. If school districts care about the safety of their young people, they will try to make these positions more attractive to potential drivers.
Yes, excellent points. When I was teaching, a bus driver successfully evacuated all the kids from a bus which had caught fire in the engine compartment. By the time the bus driver had escorted all the kids from the bus, it was totally engulfed in flames. She was a true hero, she did not panic and saved all the children from what could have been a major catastrophe. The busses would have regular fire drills each month so that the children would know what to do in case of an emergency. Driving a school bus is an incredibly demanding skill, keeping order on the bus while safely driving a very large vehicle. Driving an empty bus is no easy thing but doing it with kids on-board is an extra burden. School bus drivers have it much harder than regular bus drivers since they are responsible for the safety of the kids from the moment they pick them up to the point of destination, it’s not a job for those weak of heart, literally and figuratively. One false move and a child could be injured by the bus or some oncoming vehicle.
Bus drivers must go through a physical and have a background check. They also need to qualify to get a CDL license. Some large districts sponsor the drivers. If they have to be trained privately, it would be rather expensive for any candidate. All of these checks are important, but the pay should be commensurate with the responsibility.
I should have recalled the story about the California school bus driver who rescued 22 elementary schoolchildren during a terrifying wildfire. https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/18/us/wildfire-school-bus-rescue/index.html
Reading your post gives me much to think about. I had not looked at bus driving as so important but you make a convincing case. I would not like to have such responsibility. After reading your post I will look at them differently.
“We can’t afford to pay ________,” says wealthiest empire in the history of our planet.
Pale blue dot
A pale blue dot
In blackest void
They want the lot
The greedy boys
When you really think about it, it’s absurd that the vast majority of the people on earth put up with being exploited by a tiny tiny tiny (did I say tiny?) minority whose only hope would be to escape in their rockets on a moments notice if ever the majority decided not to put up with the exploitation any longer.
I suspect that the time is approaching. The only question is if their rockets will be ready.
Perhaps fortunately for all, that people are accepting of their lot in life. Most of us acquire awareness when above 14 years. So for many years we go to schools and we accept the state of affairs as natural. It takes quite a while before a person begins to look at things as changeable. And then if a few want change there are so many who will accept circumstances until death.
It is not so easy to change things. That may be a good thing so that we do not just change things whenever we wish. It has to come as the result of effort on the part of many.
LetThemLearn
Exactly. Business is booming for the sellers of four hundred thousand dollar watches.
The wealthiest empire in history cannot afford to pay ____ because it has reverted to the low tax ways of the Confederacy it defeated because that Confederacy wouldn’t pay taxes to win its war against the Union. Wealthy corporations and individuals say they shouldn’t pay ____ with taxes because their foundations are doing the work of the government through charity. They are not doing the work, however, they are instead spending on attacking unions. We are doomed to repeat the mistakes of plantations. Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez called us a sh-t show. She was right. Empires rise and empires fall. Ours is on the decline. I blame Bill Gates mostly.
I blame the Koch brothers and other selfish billionaires for the deterioration of our society. Their instrument is ALEC.
Ours is in free fall because the so called business leaders are primarily interested in milking the country for everything it is worth for short term gain rather than investing in the future.
Yeah, it’s almost all the billionaires milking and bilking. And I almost forgot about all the wealthy corporations doing the same. They don’t care whether there are bus drivers. They don’t even want there to be bus drivers. They don’t even want there to be public schools.
Who needs bus drivers when you can havd cars and buses that drive themselves dirdctly into
trucks and bicyclists?
https://jalopnik.com/respected-automated-driving-expert-gives-tesla-fsd-beta-1848379786
The thing that I find absolutely hilarious is that the people!e sho are supposedly the best and brightest among us produce such crap.
And the American cobsumers not only don’t demand better but gobble up the crap.
In Jacobin? What would Georges Danton have said?
Why is no one mentioning the #1 problem many bus drivers face? Out-of-control and defiant kids. We’ve had years where the bus ride is an almost daily riot. Where the bus frequently has to turn around and return to school because the kids will not heed the driver. Where kids routinely throw objects out the window while the bus is driving. Then we get flack for suspending these kids from the bus because we’re “depriving them of access to education.” What are we supposed to do?
Correction: the article does give some mention of this issue:
“School bus driver shortages have gotten some long overdue press during the pandemic. And indeed, COVID-19 has made everything worse: following the trauma of the past two years, student behaviors are more unruly, posing added safety concerns. In November, a school bus plunged into a creek in Easton, Pennsylvania, injuring the driver and thirteen students. The subsequent investigation found the driver lost control of the vehicle when a disruptive incident on board pulled her attention away from the road.
Multiple K-12 transportation workers who spoke to Jacobin described getting no support from their school administrations when students are, in Jacqueline Smith’s words, “totally out of control.” When drivers are employed by contractors rather than districts, it becomes that much easier for school leadership to view their safety concerns as someone else’s problem.”
One thing she got wrong: student behaviors aren’t worse because of COVID. They’ve always been bad, but COVID gives us cover to finally start complaining about student behavior. It’s a scapegoat. The real causes are deeper.
I think one of the problems is the anonymity of our society. When I rode the bus, I did not know it, but the driver knew every child and its parents. It is a lot more effective to tell a kid you know to quit than to not be able to call his name out because you do not know him.
True, but haven’t you observed that some kids routinely defy and disrespect adults they know well? It’s au courant to say “developing relationships” is the key to orderly schools. Yes, this should be one prong of the solution, but it cannot be the only prong. Recently a 7th grader at our school cussed out her Jewish teacher followed by “…you Jew!” I’d be curious to know what you and other readers think the school should do in this situation.
Roy, you are so right about knowing the names of the children and knowing their parents too. When I was about 7, I swiped a bottle of my mother’s favorite cologne from the drugstore. I didn’t think anyone saw it happen. When I got home, my mother was waiting for me at the door, and she sent me right back to the pharmacist to give back the cologne and apologize. I learned a lesson.
Diane: I always knew you were a criminal.
Ponderosa: Obviously there are multiple problems that add to people being antagonistic to each other, no matter their age. But the informal social controls in a stable community are powerful teachers of common decency.
@Ponderosa – you touched on a major issue that deters staffing. It’s not as much of a problem where I teach – as I work in a smaller school district and the principals do support bus drivers when defiant kids are disruptive.
Working with children who are defiant / out of control is emotionally taxing, exhausting – and on a bus downright dangerous. There is no easy solution.
@ Roy – I agree about the anonymity of our society. But like Ponderosa said – there seems to be an increase of defiant children (and adults in the news) – even with even trusted adults when things don’t go as they want.