As bus driver employment continued to decline, some school leaders said virtual learning had become a more prominent option than ever before.
With special licensing requirements, difficult hours and COVID-19, many districts struggled to retain their drivers.
Districts around Michigan have been working on contingency plans for student transportation since the pandemic started in an attempt to keep in-person classes open even as they struggled with a lack of staff.
Brain Pearson is the superintendent of Gaylord Community Schools. He said coming up with contingency plans for getting students to and from school was 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, inform the parents, and then 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 a bus as they are certified to do so.
He said they want to combat the shortage by allowing bus-driver certified people to get full-time jobs at other places in the school so they can drive the bus and still be considered a full-time employee with benefits.
“I think it's going to be an attractive position in the next few years,” Pearson said. “We're gonna do everything we can to recruit good people to consider it.”
Pearson said he does not think the problem is dependent on the pandemic and that a permanent solution must be found to avoid future virtual learning solutions.
William DiSessa, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Education, 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 talked to district officials around the state in order to understand and help solve the issue.
He said the districts are responsible for deciding their own individual 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 as the local districts, that local intermediate school district might get involved with it tries to help in some way,” DiSessa said. “We have staff at different levels, who discuss issues like this with local districts and intermediate school districts across the state.”