America has an everything shortage because we shut down the damn country for a bad variant of the common cold.
Why America has a school bus driver shortage
11–20 of 74 posts
Re: Why America has a school bus driver shortage
#12There isn’t a labor shortage. There’s a shortage of people willing to be abused and exploited.
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.
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.
As soon as the customer stops being always right, we can talk about pay.
Re: Why America has a school bus driver shortage
#13Huh, I'm surprised, my initial guess of "pays like shit" wasn't the primary reason - "bus driving has been privatized and the for-profit bus companies laid everyone off for C19" was the main one, with a chaser of "doesn't pay as well as other driving jobs".
>"bus driving has been privatized and the for-profit bus companies laid everyone off for C19" was the main one
To be fair, they'd be happy to keep the drivers on the payroll if the schools continued to pay for their service.
Re: Why America has a school bus driver shortage
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
I trained as a school bus driver, and I agree with both of you, but especially the dealing with children part. I quit my job as a bus driver on my second day because I was stressed out about hurting kids. (Yes, I know school buses are among the safest vehicles on the road; it was an irrational fear.) But the other part of the equation is the schedule. You are hired as a part-time employee, no benefits, but the schedu…
The solution is to recruit teachers to work as drivers.
AFAIK teachers are often overworked and/or do extra work outside of the classroom. I doubt they'd want a few extra hours tacked onto their existing schedule.
Re: Why America has a school bus driver shortage
#15"There's a lot of downtime during the day that you don'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/hr, which works out to a pre-tax income of ~$19.4k for 180 days of 5-hour shifts."
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'm surprised they could fill their roles during normal times.
Re: Why America has a school bus driver shortage
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Types of driving that also don't involve dealing with other peoples' children.
I trained as a school bus driver, and I agree with both of you, but especially the dealing with children part. I quit my job as a bus driver on my second day because I was stressed out about hurting kids. (Yes, I know school buses are among the safest vehicles on the road; it was an irrational fear.) But the other part of the equation is the schedule. You are hired as a part-time employee, no benefits, but the schedu…
School bus driver is a good job for otherwise stay at home parents. You drive your kids to school and back home everyday and get paid for it. Sure if you drove your own care you could do the round trip in half an hour, while the bus means it takes 2 hours, but you get paid and ensure you kids actually go to school every day. You can also take the babies along with you to work (or at least my school allowed that)
It is also a good I'm retired but need to get out of the house to do something job.
Otherwise yes, you can earn more elsewhere with better hours.
Re: Why America has a school bus driver shortage
#17tl;dr: people with commercial drivers licenses can get much higher paying jobs doing other types of driving.
This is accurate.
Re: Why America has a school bus driver shortage
#18Huh, I'm surprised, my initial guess of "pays like shit" wasn't the primary reason - "bus driving has been privatized and the for-profit bus companies laid everyone off for C19" was the main one, with a chaser of "doesn't pay as well as other driving jobs".
>"bus driving has been privatized and the for-profit bus companies laid everyone off for C19" was the main one To be fair, they'd be happy to keep the drivers on the payroll if the schools continued to pay for their service.
Sure can't use any of the $173 million they made in profit last year, though.
Re: Why America has a school bus driver shortage
#19There isn’t a labor shortage. There’s a shortage of people willing to be abused and exploited. 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. 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 alrea…
> I don’t think any amount of money would be enough for me to work with retail customers again.
That _really_ depends on how much money you currently have.
Re: Why America has a school bus driver shortage
#20tl;dr: people with commercial drivers licenses can get much higher paying jobs doing other types of driving.
Does this point to a solution in the form of using smaller vehicles that don't require a CDL? School buses are super inefficient because kids are all spread out, so you end up driving a huge 6 MPG diesel a lot of miles to pick up 40 kids. Or worse, driving it a lot of miles to pick up less than 40 kids. If you used smaller vehicles to pick up the same number of kids, you would need more of them, but they would each o…
If you're going to hire more drivers, might as well instead pay your existing drivers more. You'll get drivers that are more skilled and care more. Do you really want the equivalent of an Uber driver taking your kid to school each day?