Pg school bus shortage how to#
Pg school bus shortage drivers#

Some drivers make $19 an hour, and some make over $25 an hour. The County transportation system is a hodge-podge of different buses, drivers, policies, and pay rates. The school told me that it cannot generate a list. Officially, my middle school run has 16 kids on the roster. Contrary to what Transportation will tell you, many of us don’t even get updated lists of what kids ride on our buses. The vast majority, about 90% of all Anne Arundel County Public School kids, are transported by contractors, several of them, with different policies, communication systems, and drivers that cannot communicate with each other.

Pg school bus shortage how to#

How to tell the difference? The buses with “Anne Arundel County Public Schools” logos on the side of the bus have “official” public school bus drivers. Contractors handle special needs kids at public schools. Official Anne Arundel County school bus drivers handle many special needs kids at private schools. You will never see an Anne Arundel County Public School bus transport public school kids to a public school. Here is a quick education on the Anne Arundel County transportation system from the eyes of a school bus driver.Īnne Arundel County uses Contractors, not Anne Arundel County Public School Buses

Benefits may be offered, but the driver has to pay outrageous costs. Today, many drivers make $19 an hour with no benefits. Where I lived in 1994, a county school bus driver in rural New York made $16 per hour full-time with full benefits. Yet, school bus transportation has been in crisis for decades. If I make a mistake, I make national news. If such continues, school bus transportation in Anne Arundel County will continue to be all over the place, possibly even tragic.įew other jobs are as important as transporting kids on dangerous highways. Like most organizations, those on top, with the least understanding of day-to-day frontline operations, seldom listen to their employees or understand our day-to-day pressures. As a school bus driver for the County and one on the front lines of school transportation, I’d like to offer some tips (whoever will possibly listen) to permanently change the school bus driver shortage in the County.

The County filled gaps by offering bonuses and a slight increase in pay, but that pay is not equal across all contractors. Such a fix is the “pot-hole” approach, a temporary fix. For a few short weeks, it appeared that Anne Arundel County had mostly fixed its severe school bus driver shortage.