“There needs to be some accountability,” said Rutil Bakshi, a father of two daughters in Colombia, sharing the grievances of hundreds of other families. More than 1,000 people have signed a petition calling for the resignation of superintendent Michael Martilano.
This week’s disturbances in Howard County are part of a larger story. School districts struggle and often fail to find enough people to get students to school. In many school systems, this problem is neglected with easy solutions, sometimes with disastrous consequences.
Chicago’s public school system, which has about half of the drivers needed, said in July: service will need to be restricted To certain categories of children, including children with disabilities. Some provided fare cards for using public transport.
official of Charlottesville Parents said the year would begin without 12 lines running.and in louisvillesome students were unable to return home until nearly 10 p.m. due to a misfire at the opening ceremony, prompting the city to suspend schools for more than a week for a logistical reset.
Bus troubles in New York City could last until September: Drivers at the nation’s largest school system threaten to go on strike on Tuesday, the first day of school.Prime Minister David C. Banks and Mayor Eric Adams Outlined the backup plan This includes Uber and Lyft rides for students with disabilities and children of immigrants.
While the shortage of bus drivers has caused many problems, other difficulties have arisen, such as problems related to contracts with private bus companies. (Some districts own buses and employ drivers directly, while others use contractors.) In New York City, the problem is the relationship between private companies and drivers’ unions. It is a stalemate in labor negotiations between the two countries.
“This has been an unusually high-profile year,” said Molly Maggie Hewitt, chief executive of the National Student Transportation Association, which represents school districts across the country. There is little recent data on driver shortages, but Hewitt said she sees the situation as spotty, with some areas being severe and others having none.
Maryland is a great example. Montgomery County, the state’s largest school system, has filled its bus driver slots this year and has spares available if needed. But Howard County, a high-achieving school district with more than 57,000 students located between Baltimore and Washington, didn’t shy away from it. uproar That led to calls for the leader’s resignation this week.
And in neighboring Prince George County, the state’s second-largest school system, there are more than 210 vacancies out of 1,200 bus drivers. Prince George’s school spokesman Raven Hill said another 217 bus routes at the school will be replaced by drivers operating temporary routes as the school system continues to hire more drivers. It says it’s covered.
Erica L. Groschen, Economic Advisor Cornell University ILR School said the former head of the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, economists are likely to see job shortages as “wage shortages,” especially for jobs that don’t require long training. A wage increase might be appropriate, she said.
There are other creative solutions, she said. Find applicants from different groups, improve working conditions and benefits, and find other ways to distribute work among employees.
“I think the school system has probably kept drivers underpaid for a long time, and maybe the schools need to rethink that,” she said. Presumably, “chickens have returned to their roost,” she added.
Some debated how closely related the problem was to driver shortages.
Zum Transportation, the contractor involved in the Howard County issue, is based on the West Coast and is fairly new to yellow bus transportation, said Kurt Massin, executive director of the National School Transportation Association. said. His industry group represents bus companies.
“The challenges districts face with Zum may be a sign of their newness to the district,” he says. “It’s easy to picture this as a nationwide and consistent bus driver shortage problem, but in reality it’s all local.”
There was a shortage of bus operators in the early months of the pandemic, but the problem is now less widespread, Mae Si Singh said. Localized shortages were evident even before the pandemic, he added.
Louisville school officials announced this week that they have hired a company to redesign bus routes with fewer drivers, more bus service, and a much more spread out start and end time. But that meant a longer and unfamiliar route for drivers, and construction of the school district didn’t make it in time for the additional stops. Superintendent Marty Polio called the result a “traffic accident” for a system of 96,000 students and apologized for poor implementation.
Louisville school spokesman Mark Hebert said elementary schools were closed through August 18 and middle and high schools were closed through August 21 following the disruptions on August 9.
Still, Hébert said the biggest problem with the system was the lack of bus drivers. We need at least 100 more. The last school leaves at 4:20 p.m., but some students come home at 6:30 p.m. or 7 p.m. The superintendent said major changes would be needed to make the system work. One option he is considering is reducing the number of students covered by bus transfers.
Albemarle County Public Schools spokesperson Phil Giaramita said Charlottesville schools have been steadily removing students from waiting lists for bus pick-ups and recently lowered bus driver salaries to about $21.50 an hour, the highest in the area. said to have been lifted.
The waiting list for bus applicants has shrunk from nearly 1,000 to less than 700, he said, and the district expects hundreds more students to fall off the list in the next two weeks. Jaramita said bus transportation is critical in the sprawling 720-square-mile county.
“We are making great strides to get back to where we should be,” he said.
In Maryland, parents in Howard County erupted at a school board meeting Thursday night, with some calling for a halt to education. zum‘s $27 million contract will bring nearly half of the system’s students on board.
Zum CEO Ritu Narayan said in an interview on Friday that the bus routes had not been digitized in advance by districts and 20 bus drivers did not show up on Monday. Zum also said he inherited a shortage of 100 drivers from his previous contractor. Still, she says the problem won’t last long.
“I can assure you that when it all comes together, we will see a big change in this community,” she said.
Mr. Martilano faced the issue again at Thursday’s meeting. He noted the importance of keeping students in school as attendance numbers were down from the same period last year. “I have not forgotten the beginning of the year when we are talking about the importance of attendance. Howard County, as a school system, has failed to provide transportation to many students on time and reliably. No,” he said.
