On June 29, Meghan Fridley received a letter from Northside Independent School District alerting her that her soon-to-be second grader Ambrosia would no longer have bus transportation to Raba Elementary School, located about a mile-and-a-half away.
Fridley, a single mom living on San Antonio’s far West Side, was dismayed. To walk to school, Ambrosia would have to cross Westover Hills Boulevard, a busy street Fridley said presents safety concerns.
“I didn’t feel comfortable with my daughter crossing it or with any other child crossing it,” she said. “You’ve got to walk fast past crosswalks, and even then, drivers go fast.”
Fridley contacted Northside ISD’s transportation department and learned that state law stipulates districts provide transportation for students living two miles or more away from their campus. For the most part, students living inside the two-mile boundary have to make their own arrangements. In rare cases, when hazards – flood risks, inadequate walkways, traffic dangers, wild animals, and high-crime areas – are present on the path to school, a district may choose to provide additional transportation.
When Fridley first contacted the district, Northside officials said there was little they could do. Fridley decided to create an online petition and called on her neighbors to contact the district and voice their concerns.
As a result, Northside Deputy Superintendent for Administration Ray Galindo contacted parents in Fridley’s neighborhood on July 18, saying the district had reversed its decision and would provide busing, this time from a bus stop at the neighborhood’s clubhouse.
School districts nationwide are facing bus driver shortages that put a strain on transportation decisions, especially in large and growing districts like Northside ISD. Galindo’s letter detailed reasons why Northside made the initial decision to stop bus service.
“Each summer a committee convenes to review bus routes, and, when possible, eliminate services where construction improvements have been made such that there is an adequate route for students to walk to and from school,” Galindo wrote. “Although every summer routes are eliminated, other routes are added to accommodate for district growth. The number of routes that are added each summer far outweighs the number of routes that are eliminated.”
Perhaps no district has been hit by the bus driver shortage as severely as Northside ISD, where new campuses open every year, and the student population continues to grow. Prior to the start of the 2018-19 academic year, the district still had about 50 driver vacancies for its total roster of 700 drivers.
“We have to resolve this driver issue because we are at a breaking point,” Northside Transportation Director Rafael Salazar said.
San Antonio’s second largest school district, North East ISD, too, has felt the strain of a driver shortage. One week before the start of the school year, NEISD had 17 openings. Jack De Forrest, executive director the district’s transportation department, said strict qualifications make hiring bus drivers difficult.
“It takes five contacts to get one employee,” De Forrest said. “Some people will lose interest when they find out that they actually have to drive with children in the bus. … We lose people who discover that all of our drivers are split-shift, part-time employees.”
Beyond the basic responsibilities of the job, districts have high expectations for potential job candidates. Drivers are held to the same standard as any classroom teacher, because they spend unsupervised time with children. In addition, drivers have to pass a physical that evaluates hearing, eyesight, blood sugar levels, medical history, and drug use.
Once drivers are hired, De Forrest said, districts still have to grapple with regular turnover from retirements. One-third of NEISD’s fleet of drivers is comprised of veterans, and the average age is just under 58. For this reason, NEISD has to hire about 100 drivers each summer to maintain a steady roster of 300.
Location can also prove to be a hiring challenge. Salazar said staffing levels can vary based on the location of the district’s bus terminals. At the terminal located in the northernmost part of the district, Northside has trouble with vacancies because fewer job candidates live nearby.
“In the south, we do just fine, because plenty of people live nearby,” Salazar said. “The challenge is getting [drivers] in the north and in the Helotes area. That is where we struggle.”
Without a sufficient pool of candidates to hire, other employees step in to fill the gaps. De Forrest said all full-time NEISD transportation employees maintain the credentials and standards necessary to pick up a route.
De Forrest estimates that in the last three years, when the bus driver shortage has been especially taxing, most of the 50 full-time employees on his staff have covered a morning or afternoon route for the district in addition to completing their other job responsibilities.
“When our staffing is down … everyone is working a lot of hours, and we are spending a lot of money on overtime,” De Forrest said.
At times when staffing is strained, students and parents may notice the overburdened bus service.
Districts implement various tactics to fit in more routes and deliver more students on time with limited resources. NEISD and Northside both employ tiered routes, which uses the same bus to drop off kids at an elementary, then a middle, and then a high school. This can sometimes push forward the time younger students get to campus or delay the arrival for the older students.
“This year, we are dropping off at the elementary school at 6:50 so we can get [students] in for breakfast, and then going to the middle school, and then the high school is getting stuck with delays,” Salazar said. “Kids can arrive late because of traffic patterns which pushes back picking up students. … We had some kids missing some school last year, with the kids getting there at 9 and the bell rang at 8:55 and then kids have to pick up breakfast and run to their locker.”
Districts also use double runs, which means a bus picks up a load of kids to drop off at the end of the day from one campus, and then returns to that campus to pick up and drop off another busload of students. The double run can push back a drop-off time so students spend more time on campus and get home later.
Parents often come to Salazar and De Forrest with individual concerns about their own students’ busing situation. Both transportation officials told the Rivard Report that families frequently ask why their student doesn’t get bus service when they pay taxes.
In NEISD, buses use about 4,000 gallons of fuel per day driving roughly 17,000 miles. Last year, one mile driven cost the district $4.62, De Forrest said. On a daily basis, NEISD spent close to $80,000 on transportation.
“When people say, ‘Can’t you just send a bus?,’ [I ask] who is going to pay for it?’” De Forrest said. “What program is budgeted to pay for it? Because buses are expensive.”
Can that be right? $80,000 per day? Figuring a 270 school day year, that would be $21,600,000 per year for buses in one school district.
Or at 180 days, it’s $14,400,000 per year.
It is time for the state law to be revisited and probably revised. It is time to think outside the box for new solutions. One “new” solution might be to contract to VIA to haul school children. In the day before school buses were state mandatory, students rode city buses and paid an extremely reduced fare.
As a side issue, when school busing is free to attendees, the streets outside the schools are clogged every morning and afternoon with parents who are picking up and dropping off. While it might exacerbate the driver problem, perhaps there should be a required fee for the bus service, whether the family chooses to use it or not. That of course raises other issues, primarily for those who struggle financially, but that is what thinking outside the box is all about. Finding new solutions for existing problems.
The VIA idea has some merit to it. I doubt that many parents would let that fly for elementary school aged children; however, high school and middle school could work.
I am not a fan of the fee idea while I appreciate the logic. Practically that would piss off the parents even more than cancelling service as aforesaid in the beginning of the article.
It seems the problem here, driver shortage is twofold. Constant sizable turnover, and an unappealing job. The behavior on some buses can get quite unruly and fractious. I am surprised it ever worked. If you paid the drivers for a full day’s of work working part time hours, that might increase its appeal. “Might” Then where do you get the money to pay them more? The fee idea?
I think if the state or district was able to contract out with a transportation like VIA to charter (reduced cost) buses for morning and afternoon, districts may be able to pick up the slack. It sounds like a temporary solution though.
Are school buses mandatory in Texas? According to the Texas Education Code, independent school districts and county transportation services are “eligible” to receive reimbursement from the state, for providing education transportation. Does anyone remember way back when there was no busing, so many kids (especially in the countryside) didn’t go to school or their parents didn’t bother sending them? Of course that was before attending school became mandatory. Busing (not mandatory) was developed as a way for children to get to school (mandatory) safely and on time. Parents today take it for granted because it’s always been there for them. Then again, there are plenty of states that don’t provide it, and those parents can tell you how difficult it is to get the kids to school, without being late to work, or if their vehicle breaks down, or if they’re single parents and have no other options. Contracting public transportation services for kids is not a new idea, except that bus drivers have the same back-ground checks and child training that teachers do, and public drivers don’t.
Not surprising that one school district spends that much a day; buses are big and have lousy gas mileage, and the population here keeps growing exponentially. Schools have always relied heavily on property taxes, which was doable when Texas had a smaller population. I remember when Texas was rich, had the best roads in the country, and a very good educational system. Things have certainly changed, and a large state with a large (and continuously growing) population, cannot keep up an expense, it simply cannot afford. Possible solutions? I agree with the VIA & the fee idea (monthly passes for jr/high school students; monthly fees or school year fees (low income eligible reduced/free); more schools in more neighborhoods, smaller in size; cut extracurricular activities in half (lots of money there); smaller buses with better gas mileage; create a state tax, and lower the property tax rates.