Why America has a school bus driver shortage

There isn’t a labor shortage. There’s a shortage of people willing to be abused and exploited.<p>I don’t think any amount of money would be enough for me to work with retail customers again. Much less unruly kids that you can’t do anything about.<p>If it’s between your story and the story the kid told their parents, you’ll lose that battle most of the time and likely end up getting yourself in more trouble than you already were.<p>As soon as the customer stops being always right, we can talk about pay.

<i>&quot;There&#x27;s a lot of downtime during the day that you don&#x27;t get paid for. You might work a 10-hour day, but you only get compensated for your shifts. .... [Corey Ford] as a driver, he earned $19&#x2F;hr, which works out to a pre-tax income of ~$19.4k for 180 days of 5-hour shifts.&quot;</i><p>Imagine a job that required your entire day, but they decided not to pay you during the late morning through the early afternoon. This has got to be one of the worst paying jobs in the country. I&#x27;m surprised they could fill their roles during normal times.

&quot;We&#x27;ve spent decades closing neighborhood schools, consolidating schools in unwalkable locations, and making our communities more dangerous places for kids to walk and bike, all while public transportation became less frequent and less available.<p>As late as 1969, about half of kids under 15 usually walked or bicycled to school. By 2009, the figure was 13 percent.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.strongtowns.org&#x2F;journal&#x2F;2021&#x2F;9&#x2F;23&#x2F;the-school-bus-driver-shortage-is-a-problem-we-didnt-have-to-have" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.strongtowns.org&#x2F;journal&#x2F;2021&#x2F;9&#x2F;23&#x2F;the-school-bus...</a>

I have a Class B CDL (with a medical cert restriction since it was for a state job, meaning no commerical jobs unless I get a medical done. I presume driving a school bus would be exempt for this) in New York. I guess I was one of the &quot;500k+&quot; people targeted by NYS, as I received an email asking me to apply to be a school bus driver. I gave it a quick thought before realizing that I work a 9 to 5 job, so there was no way I could even work the job if I wanted to. Besides the other good reasons mentioned in the article and this thread, I&#x27;m sure that also restricts the number of applicants because most people can&#x27;t work during those hours unless they are retired or unemployed.

The article mainly focuses on pay. And that&#x27;s true, bus drivers need and deserve way, way more money. Anyone with a CDL can go out and make 6 digits without much trouble. Yet they want people to do it for 1&#x2F;4 the money.<p>In addition to more money, they need more power to throw kids off the bus or ban them outright. Today they must just tolerate kids cussing you out, throwing things at you, and oftentimes trying to physically assault you. You wouldn&#x27;t believe the awful things I saw on a public schoolbus.<p>You&#x27;d have to be insane to sign up for that in current conditions.

In our local district, rather than have individual buses for elementary, middle school, etc., they are having one driver pick up the elementary kids, drop them off, the go back out and pick up the older kids. They had to change the start times for elementary and high school to make this work, and they&#x27;re also paying the drivers more, but it seems to be working. One issue is that if a single driver goes down (illness, etc.) it&#x27;s a huge hit to logistics, and subs are hard to come by. But mostly they&#x27;ve made it work.

Huh, I&#x27;m surprised, my initial guess of &quot;pays like shit&quot; wasn&#x27;t the primary reason - &quot;bus driving has been privatized and the for-profit bus companies laid everyone off for C19&quot; was the main one, with a chaser of &quot;doesn&#x27;t pay as well as other driving jobs&quot;.

There is also no &quot;shortage&quot; of materials like microchips. Those are all just fancy ways of saying INFLATION.<p>If you pay enough, you&#x27;ll get those microchips delivered to wherever you want by tomorrow morning, trust me. That&#x27;s how the world works, like it or not.

Is this similar to the HGV issues Britain is having with food and fuel shortages? Nobody to deliver it.

tl;dr: people with commercial drivers licenses can get much higher paying jobs doing other types of driving.