![]() School districts nationwide are struggling to get bus drivers behind the wheel. Help each other out to make it possible.” Not just a Colorado problem How is everyone working to maintain their buses? At least to help the parents that need it,” said Talamantes. “I think it would be helpful just to see other ideas other options. Her message to the school district is to allow other people to come help brainstorm different options. But, she’s not sure how much longer they can survive with that sacrifice. He recognizes this decision is putting more teenagers on the road and more children in cars with teenagers driving.įor moms like Talamantes, she would rather lose half her family’s income than put her children in danger. We’re not going to be the only district that’s doing this in the future you’re going to see more and more around us,” said Kerr. “As a state we need to address the issue - as a nation we need to address the issue - because it’s not going away and it’s only going to get worse. Kerr knows of at least four other Colorado superintendents having to do the same thing because of the lack of drivers. ![]() Often, Kerr said he has had to get behind the wheel himself. The school district does offer before and after school programs and a virtual option for students to learn from home if transportation becomes an issue. “So, people don’t want to drive a school bus for $25 an hour when they can drive a truck full time.” “Which is the same thing as driving a semi-truck,” he said. Kerr explained that in order for people to qualify to drive a school bus, they need to earn a Class B CDL. Recruiting more has been challenging, Kerr said, because of the job requirements. The first two years were because of the pandemic, then the district lost all their drivers to retirement. ![]() This will be the third year families in Wiggins will not have bus transportation. As for driving kids to school, Kerr said, “it was something nobody wanted to do.” Students go years without school transportation The district is down to six buses that they have for activities and emergencies. “If they’re not being ran, the batteries were being worn down.” “We had to get new batteries in them,” Kerr explained. The district crunched the numbers and realized they were losing money by having over a dozen buses just sit in a parking lot. “We just had a pumpkin patch farm pick them up so they can use them for a zombie apocalypse-type area,” Kerr said of the buses. Wiggins School District Superintendent Trent Kerr said the district sold half its fleet. The transportation problem is not because there is a lack of buses, but because there is lack of drivers. Talamantes and other farmworker families have tried carpooling but because Wiggins is so spread out, that has been hard. “I’ll pump gas but I don’t go anywhere else because gas here was almost $5 ,” she said. She said the money her husband earns goes to bills and gas. Her husband is a farmworker at a dairy nearby. “For parents that … live far from the school and try to get a job and we can’t because there’s no transportation that will bring our kids safe from school and to school… so it’s hard,” said Talamantes. Three in 10 respondents said those constraints have been severe.Talamantes said it has been hard for her to get a job because she has to plan around driving her kids to and from school. Nearly 9 in 10 HopSkipDrive survey respondents said driver shortages have constrained their school or district’s operations this year. Elsewhere, according to media reports, shortages have been responsible for students missing class or getting home from school late, athletic events getting canceled or rescheduled, and districts investing in expensive charter buses or rental vehicles to fill gaps. In Anchorage, Alaska, families get bus service for three weeks at a time, then miss out for six weeks as the routes rotate to other areas. Students in Ohio’s Reynoldsburg district have had to learn remotely one or two days a week this year because staffing shortages forced bus service cuts. “With the school bus driver shortage, if a route is not running, the students do not have a way to get to school,” the respondent said. One anonymous respondent said special education students have the lowest attendance of any population in the district.
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