- National school bus driver shortage drivers#
- National school bus driver shortage software#
- National school bus driver shortage license#
National school bus driver shortage drivers#
Some school bus operators are offering signing bonuses, including one district in Vermont that is dangling a $1,000 offer for drivers who stick around for a year and another in Connecticut offering up to $3,000 for experienced drivers. I can't get them to and from school every day," LaTavia Steel told KDKA. "I'm a mother - a single mother of six kids at two different schools. The cuts in school bus service is leaving families frustrated, with Pittsburgh parents telling KDKA that they're worried and stressed about their ability to get to work and the safety of their children. And competition from other businesses that need drivers, such as trucking companies, may be luring workers away, he said.
National school bus driver shortage license#
One study found little difference in job growth between states that cut unemployment assistance early versus those that have maintained the aid.īecause some state Department of Motor Vehicle offices were closed during the pandemic, that created a bottleneck in training new school bus drivers, who need a commercial drivers license to qualify for the job, Macysyn said. However, there is little economic evidence that enhanced jobless aid is keeping workers from rejoining the labor market. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.The extra pandemic unemployment aid, which will expire on September 6, may be keeping some drivers on the sidelines, Macysyn added. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor.
Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. (SOUNDBITE OF ULRICH SCHNAUSS' "KNUDDELMAUS")Ĭopyright © 2021 NPR. SHAPIRO: The National School Transportation Association has called the school bus driver shortage unprecedented at a national level - yet another unprecedented problem in a year unlike any other. So they've run to us and sought the transportation through the carpool. And in my mind, I'm like, you know what? We don't have to have both of these cars on the road.ĬORNISH: Now El-Amin runs the PiggyBack network, a place where, for a fee, Chicago families can find carpools for their kids.ĮL-AMIN: We've had, unfortunately, a lot of families are running into a situation where they had a bus route scheduled or they had some type of private transportation scheduled, and abruptly, they were canceled. The kids are waving at each other through the window. See, before the pandemic, he started a small carpool network.ĮL-AMIN: I was literally driving on the highway in Chicago for 40 minutes next to another driver that goes to my daughter's school.
National school bus driver shortage software#
It's a problem that El-Amin, a software developer, is uniquely positioned to help with. SHAPIRO: Ismael El-Amin has children in the Chicago public school system, which is also experiencing a shortage of bus drivers. ISMAEL EL-AMIN: A few years into parenting, we were juggling. And one problem they've identified - the tests to qualify to drive a bus in Chelsea were only available in English.ĪBEYTA: And so now the test is in different languages, so they've been able to recruit, from what I hear, 50 to 60 drivers. But in education, you can sometimes assume that no news is good news.ĬORNISH: Abeyta feels like her district won't need the National Guard past December because they've been in solutions mode. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker loaned Abeyta's district 15 National Guard members to drive students to school until December.ĪBEYTA: I have not heard any complaints, not that that means it's perfect. But transportation is something where we will hear about it from families if transportation isn't working.Īlmi Abeyta is the superintendent of the Chelsea School District in Massachusetts, where 1,500 of the district's 6,000 students rely on school bus transportation. Then, just as most school districts across the country began returning to the classroom, they ran up against another significant barrier - the national shortage of school bus drivers.ĪLMI ABEYTA: We can get the schools ready. First, COVID-19 forced the American education system into remote learning. The pandemic has been hard on students, schools and families over the past three academic years.
0 kommentar(er)
