Palmer said it hit hard in the Adams County Ohio Valley Schools in southern Ohio, one of the state’s largest rural districts. The pandemic has also been a contributing factor in the shortage, which is the case the commercial trucking industry as well. Palmer said districts can eliminate high school busing, or shut down routes that are closer than two miles from school, and run buses on more shifts – meaning drivers would do four or five trips in both the morning and afternoon.īut state law says a district can’t just cancel all bus service for the day but keep schools open, as has happened in other states. "Another strategy that we have is to potentially have a school not in session on a particular day so that those drivers can cover other needs.” “In order to keep from having to close the entire district on any given day might be to delay a particular building by an hour," Snyder said. Snyder said that’s one of several challenging options. Westerville has warned its 15,500 kids and their parents that one or more schools closing for the day is a highly possible scenario to deal with the shortage. "We have just over 10,000 students assigned to our daily routes.” We have 131 daily routes that we serve students with," Snyder said. “We travel the equivalent of Los Angeles to New York about three times a day total across our fleet. That’s the story in Westerville north of Columbus, where Randy Snyder manages the bus fleet and its drivers. Palmer said a crush of recent retirements has left more bus driver seats open than people to fill them. "And we have now reached the point where we have no more fill-ins for regular drivers.” I mean, they are scraping the bottom," Palmer said. “Either by doubling up on routes or finding a mechanic to drive or another secretary to drive or a coach to drive. He’s talked to nearly every district, and all are reporting having to make alternative plans to get kids to school. Since Ohio law requires public schools to transport all eligible students – their own as well as private and charter school students – Palmer said, Ohio does more bus service than any other state. And right now we're running somewhere around 2-3% short of having all of those routes covered," said Doug Palmer, the transportation consultant for the Ohio School Boards Association. “We normally have around 15,000 routes on a daily basis in the state of Ohio. But for many districts, there aren’t enough drivers to keep all the buses running.Ī new study from a coalition of national school transportation groups says every region of the country is dealing with a bus driver shortage, with just over half describing their shortage as “severe” or “desperate”. Ohio’s school buses travel a million miles each school day. The start of the school year has been a rough ride for many kids who haven’t been on a regular schedule for more than a year, and for districts that are struggling with thousands of COVID cases among students and staff.īut there’s another problem that’s grinding school operations across the state toward a stop – a bus driver shortage.Ī bus pulling away from the curb sounds like the end of summer to some 800,000 Ohio kids and their parents.
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