Mount Pleasant Public Schools face issues hiring, retaining bus drivers
A bus advertises Mount Pleasant High School is hiring school bus drivers at the old Big Boy location at 1623 S Mission St. on Feb. 24.
A yellow school bus sits alongside Mission Street advertising that Mount Pleasant High School is hiring bus drivers. Challenges are arising for some Michigan school districts, like Mount Pleasant Public Schools (MPPS), when hiring and retaining these employees.
Jennifer Verleger, superintendent for MPPS, said the district is working hard to secure bus drivers.
“We're doing everything that we can to recruit drivers, but the driver shortage isn't only a situation that's happening to schools,” Verleger said. “We're competing against a private industry that could pay someone significantly more to drive and then they also don't have the additional responsibility of a bus full of students.”
Some districts are even creating plans to ensure in-person classes will continue for students despite these transportation issues.
“(Virtual learning) is not a permanent solution and it’s not anything we want to do,” Verleger said. “If we had two or three drivers test positive (for COVID-19) and had no subs to cover their routes, I could see us having to cancel individual routes for a couple of days.”
Verleger said the issue of transportation peaked at the beginning of the pandemic when drivers retired earlier than expected.
MPPS turns to Isabella County to make up for the lack of their bus drivers.
“We just don't have the staff to support what we need. A solution for families that need help is that we provide bus passes, but it's not perfect,” Verleger said. “That's not the same as having a school bus (and) picking up your child at your home...(We) can’t really do (that) until we can get more people to want to be drivers and get them trained.”
MPPS offers benefits to potential drivers such as paid training as well as dental, vision and long-term disability coverage. The drivers are also put into the Michigan retirement system.
Brian Pearson, the superintendent of Gaylord Community Schools, said coming up with contingency plans for transporting students is a top priority.
“The contingency in place takes our two shortest routes in a double run,” Pearson said. “We would keep those kids at school supervised (and) inform the parents. Then (we would) go back, run the other route and get them home 45 minutes late.”
Pearson said they are forced to have other staff, such as the head of their transportation department and bus mechanic, drive since they are certified.
He said the district wants to combat the shortage by allowing bus-driver certified people to get full-time jobs at other schools. This would allow these drivers to be full-time employees with benefits while they drive the buses.
“I think it's going to be an attractive position in the next few years,” Pearson said. “We're going to do everything we can to recruit good people to consider it.”
William DiSessa, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Education (MDE), said the shortage was already a problem before the pandemic began.
“Based on input from local districts around the state, we know that bus drivers were added to our critical shortage list of public school personnel back in 2016, and then have remained there pretty much since then,” DiSessa said.
Although bus employment is not monitored nor funded by the state, DiSessa said the MDE spoke to district officials around the state to understand and help solve the issue.
He said the districts are responsible for deciding their incentives and benefits for their drivers based on available resources.
“It's a by-district issue, or it could be regional if an entire county is having the same bus driver issues,” DiSessa said. “We have staff at different levels who discuss issues like this with local districts and intermediate school districts across the state.”
Pearson agrees that this is not an issue dependent on the COVID-19 pandemic. He believes school districts must find a permanent solution.
"I still think we're going to have bus driver shortages across the state, and we need to start thinking upstream on how we can attract, retain and reward really good people to go into that profession," Pearson said.
