SPECIAL REPORT
For Whom The Bells Toll
Calls to change school start times as a result of nationwide school bus driver shortages are ringing out across North America.
Written by Art Gissendaner
T
he epidemic of the school bus driver shortage and its impact on students’ education appears as a never-ending story to which school offi- cials are trying feverishly to write a final chapter. The effects of the shortage, which student transporters
say is not new to the industry, has been exacerbated to the extreme by the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandem- ic, and the outcomes have been well-documented in the national media—students are chronically late for school or stranded at their bus stops, resulting in lost instruc- tion time. This is compounded by distraught parents who must adjust their work schedules to transport their children to and from school. The list goes on. Meanwhile, some enterprising school districts are
hoping that the panacea to the problem is a combination of changing bell times for the start of school and adding tiers to their bus runs to get the most from their dwin- dling transportation resources. A tier is an additional run using the same bus and driver, but at a later start time. But those moves come with their own unique set of
unintended outcomes, including changing start times for students who walk to school, wreaking logistical havoc on coordinating sports and other extracurricular activities. Conventional thinking pre-COVID was that changing
bell times is a politically charged issue that can disrupt family routines, alter lifestyles and destabilize communi- ties. And if done at all, bell time changes should be carefully planned and implemented no more often than annually.
20 School Transportation News • JANUARY 2022
In California, the changes have been legislated and starting this summer, school officials must change the school day so high school students do not start school before 8:30 a.m. This must be accomplished by this summer. Texas also mandates that classes for middle schoolers and high school students cannot start before 8:10 a.m. and 8:40 a.m., respectively. Meanwhile, Pasco County Schools north of Tampa,
Florida is changing bell times this month by adding a fourth tier to the transportation scheme. This puts the district in the vanguard of efforts by school districts nationwide to offset the effects of the national shortage of school bus drivers. Pasco Schools Transportation Director Gary Sawyer said that while the move was not easy, it appears to be working. “By going to a fourth tier, we actually reduced the total number of drivers needed to get the same amount of work done,” Sawyer explained. “It’s a numbers game. If a bus can serve four schools instead of three, you need fewer drivers.” He said making that determination was the easy part. His staff had to balance the four tiers to use the fewest number of drivers possible in each tier. He said this is where the bell time changes come in because once you place everyone in a bell tier based on the number of buses it would take to service their school, transportation had to coordinate the four tiers to make sure the buses could get through the runs on time.
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