Even after streamlining its fleet to cope with driver shortages, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools has almost 10% of its routes uncovered with less than two weeks until school starts.
Districts across the country are struggling to find drivers.
- In Louisville, Kentucky, where schools were supposed to open last week, officials had to delay the start of school after what officials called “a transportation disaster” caused partly by a lack of drivers.
- Wake County, which has 32 year-round schools that opened in July, has resorted to an every-other-week bus service for some schools.
- Winston Salem-Forsyth Schools held a news conference Tuesday warning families to expect widespread delays.
CMS cut its bus fleet by about 10% this year in an effort to run with fewer drivers. But Transportation Director Adam Johnson told a school board committee Wednesday there are 82 driver spots open out of 840 buses expected to roll on Aug. 28. That comes from 32 vacancies and 50 drivers on leave.
Johnson didn’t explain how that would play out, but the district can use substitute drivers or double up routes, which creates longer rides and, often, late buses.
CMS is offering a $1,500 recruitment bonus for drivers and paying $17.75 an hour. But Johnson said the district competes with the CATS bus system, which pays $25 an hour for part-time drivers. That’s 40% more than the CMS rate.
He said CMS has tried offering combination jobs, where a teacher assistant or other support person also drives a bus, but got only a handful of takers. “We didn’t get the interest that we hoped we would get,” he told the committee.
School board member Dee Rankin raised the question of the district’s new express bus program, which requires students at about a dozen high school magnets to get to stops that can be miles from home. That plan is unpopular with families who say they can’t drive their kids to and from those stops, and Rankin asked about restoring neighborhood stops.
Johnson said to offer neighborhood pick-ups and drop-offs for the magnet schools, CMS would need 968 drivers. “So instead of the vacancies of 32 that we would have, we’d be closer to 200 vacancies,” he said.
Johnson said high schools located at UNC Charlotte and Central Piedmont Community College’s uptown campus began using the express system last week and there have been “no complaints so far.”
Erik Turner, principal of the new Central Piedmont Early College High School, told WFAE the first week of express busing has run smoothly. The countywide magnet school has about 200 students and only one has withdrawn because the family couldn’t make the express system work, he said.
“We have 14 buses that service 24 express stops across the county and our buses have consistently arrived on time in both the morning and afternoon,” he said.
