SPECIAL REPORT


Which of the following statements best describes the school bus driver shortage at your school district/ company?


48% Despite being very short, we have made changes to accommodate our transportation needs


29% Severe. It’s a struggle to make routes work every day


19% We are fully staffed but continue to have a high number of callouts and not enough sub drivers


4% we are fully staffed with an adequate number of sub drivers (Out of 226 responses.)


McGlinchey said that even making the waiver per- manent “is not a silver bullet” to get more drivers. “But everything from helping with student management to offering training to waiving that under-the-hood require- ment, every little bit helps,” he said. Macysyn added that removing the requirement is also


important for safety and environmental reasons. “Having more passenger vehicles on the road to take students to school is not environmentally desirable, and statistically, having parents and students drive to school is far less safe than taking a school bus,” he shared. “With the deploy- ment of more electric school buses, the under-the-hood requirement will become completely obsolete. School bus manufacturers actually do not want the untrained under the hood of the vehicle. It would be good for the state driver’s license agencies to get in front of this issue be- cause they will eventually have to adapt. Any delay causes more potential drivers to [fall out] by the system not being proactive and addressing this situation now.”


Serious Shortages, Serious Effects The School Transportation News survey found that 229 districts/companies reported a total shortage of almost


20 School Transportation News • JULY 2023


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