All around the United States, communities are struggling to find people to fill job openings as bus drivers.

“What we’re seeing across the nation right now is that a lot of our baby boomers, or those that are getting ready to retire, are retiring from positions and there’s really not a lot of people out there to fill those positions,” Tom Stegman, USD250’s chief operations officer, said.

This problem arose after the Covid-19 pandemic, as fewer people began to apply for the positions.

“It’s really easy to notice that there’s a shortage when we start having difficulty completing our routes,” Stegman said.

USD250 provides transportation for anybody who needs it that lives at least one mile from the building they attend school at.

“Daily routes are a priority for us,” Stegman said. “We try to assist those folks who may not be able to drive or have someone drive them to school by picking up those students at certain bus stop locations and bringing them to school.”

According to Stegman, one of the biggest issues the lack of bus drivers causes is getting students to and from extracurricular activities.

“When you don’t have enough drivers, you just can’t pull a driver from a route to go to an activity and expect those kids, on the daily route, to get home somehow,” Stegman said.

This problem affects students participating in activities in multiple ways.

“What it could do is cause you to have to leave school earlier, which means it could be a loss of academic time, number one,” Stegman said. “Number 2: it means that our bus driver has to either go do a route and come back and that means that you may not get home as early from that activity because you may have to wait for them to return.”

It also affects the students that ride the bus to and from school.

“We have to add more students to the bus and so instead of us having a bus that maybe has 40 to 50 kids on it, you’re gonna see a bus that has 60 to 70 kids,” Stegman said. “That definitely does affect our students because they have to ride longer on a bus as we have more students and more stops.”

Stegman, along with others, have been working hard to advertise for more drivers in multiple ways.

“I have gone to four different job fairs. I’ve been on The Morning Sun about two or three times discussing bus driving and bussing as a larger issue. I have even been on TV with KOAM,” Stegman said. “If you go to ball games right now you’re gonna see a ticket booth with a pamphlet on how you can apply for bus drivers and it kind of tells you our mission.”

During the search for job applicants, many teachers have stepped in to temporarily fill positions.

“They have helped us drive activity trips after school,” Stegman said. “Mr. Elliott, the USD250 superintendent, and I have both assisted in driving buses to aid in driving bus routes when we are short drivers.”

Mary Packard is one of the teachers helping drive buses. She got her class B CDL license with passenger endorsement during the summer of 2023.

“I thought about it as being a great opportunity,” Packard said. “It’s pretty expensive to get it on your own but the state of Kansas and the school district paid for my fee.”

According to Packard, getting this specific license creates more avenues for part-time employment.

“I believe it will open up opportunities for me when I retire,” Packard said. “I have added a seasonal summer job and for retirement I would love to work at a National Park where I could be employed as a shuttle bus driver.”

At the district board meeting on Sept. 9, board members voted to raise the starting salary of bus drivers to $20 an hour to make it more competitive and appealing.

“We’re always looking for good people and that’s the most important thing we can talk about,” Stegman said. “We want good people for our kids. We want the right people.”

This story was originally published on The Booster Redux on November 15, 2024.