Bus companies continue to struggle with hiring school bus drivers
Jon Andreassi/Observer-Reporter
Adam Johnston of Schweinebraten Bus Co. in South Strabane rinses off the side of a bus following the morning pick-up.
Jon Andreassi/Observer-Reporter
A line of Schweinebraten Bus Co. vehicles sit in a new lot on the business’ South Strabane property. Schweinebraten is preparing to add more buses in anticipation of the creation of the new Trinity Intermediate School.
For many, it’s a given that the school bus will pick up their children in the morning and drop them back off in the afternoon. But behind the scenes, area school districts and bus companies struggle to maintain a consistent fleet of drivers.
Local bus lines report that multiple factors play into the bus driver shortage, whether it is the requirements to receive a license, or the job itself being a tough sell.
Dale Lyons, vice president of operations for the South Strabane Township-based Schweinebraten Bus Co., said the driver shortage has been an issue since the pandemic began in 2020.
“The labor issue is a nationwide thing; it’s not just us. In our business we have much more stringent guidelines to follow than local grocery stores do, or Walmart,” Lyons said.
Other than needing a commercial driver’s license (CDL) to operate a school bus, Lyons explained that bus companies require an annual physical, pre-employment drug test and criminal background checks. Drivers are also required to obtain a child abuse clearance to be around students.
After that, drivers will need 20 hours of training and classroom instruction before they can take their driving exam.
It can be daunting, but Lyons has a similar message for anyone who walks through the door hoping for a job.
“You’re going to do what everyone else in that yellow bus has done before you. Nobody is born a school bus driver, but we’re going to mold you into one,” Lyons said.
Schweinebraten provides the daily pickups and drop-offs for a portion of the Trinity Area School District and for all of Chartiers-Houston School District.
Lyons said in his 42 years at Schweinebraten, he recalls just one instance of the company missing a route, which occurred about 35 years ago when a driver did not show up for work. Recently, the closest call they had was when Lyons and a few other employees came down with COVID-19.
“We didn’t not cover the runs. We just had to do some moving around, some juggling, to cover the runs, but we took every student to school,” Lyons said.
Aaron Scott, director of facilities and transportation at Trinity, said the district has been feeling the effects of the lack of drivers. Trinity contracts Canton Township-based GG&C Bus Co. to cover the rest of the district.
“We’re kind of all hands on deck,” Scott said. “GG&C especially doesn’t have back-up drivers. If someone gets sick, we have to combine routes.”
When it comes to athletics and other extracurricular activities, Trinity often has to reach out to other contractors to make sure students will have transportation.
“We’re using up every possible bus company … Unfortunately, costs go up when you do that, but we do the best we can to keep things in check,” Scott said.
Transportation for extracurriculars has also been difficult for Central Greene School District and its bus provider, Fox School Bus Services.
Valerie Brooks, the district’s director of business affairs and transportation, said their athletic programs are the ones suffering the most from a lack of drivers.
“We have to deal with it all the time. It hasn’t really affected our daily … It is starting to affect our sports transportation,” Brooks said.
The issue caused the district to reschedule a middle school football game this month. “They just didn’t have enough drivers to provide for us,” Brooks said.
Kay Fox, owner of the Franklin Township busing company, acknowledged the problems with attracting drivers, and in some cases, candidates don’t make it past the background check.
“It’s a series of things that must pass before they can even get their license,” Fox said.
Fox also said the job itself may not be appealing for many people.
“It’s a job, that’s what it is. You can’t really change it a lot. You’re on a very strict schedule. You need to be there when you need to be there, because parents expect their kids home at a certain time. It’s a job that you can’t be late for,” Fox said.
Todd Rittenhouse agreed that the job of school bus driver can be a tough pitch.
“I think one of the struggles we have is this is a part-time role. Finding people that want a part-time job with not a lot of benefits. Medical, dental, a lot of us can’t offer those kinds of things,” Rittenhouse said.
Rittenhouse is the fleet manager of Rittenhouse Bus Lines in Franklin Township, Fayette County, and has testified before lawmakers in Harrisburg on the issue of bus driver shortages.
Rittenhouse Bus Lines provides service to Uniontown Area School District, as well as several parochial schools in the area.
Student management is another issue that can make recruiting difficult.
“It can be a stressful job. You have 40 to 50 kids’ lives in your hands. You’re on a road with other people who don’t respect that vehicle enough, and what we’re carrying,” Rittenhouse said. “Several people say, ‘I love the kids, but the part of it I struggle with is putting it all together.'”
Rittenhouse also points to COVID-19 as a turning point for the industry, as before the pandemic, active recruiting for drivers was not as necessary.
“After COVID, we have to be more active in that in terms of recruiting and training,” Rittenhouse said.
In 2021, a bipartisan committee of state senators and representatives issued a report with recommendations on how to address the shortage.
Some of those have come to fruition, such as a school bus-only CDL that became available in August. Rittenhouse explained that this streamlines the process to remove the “under the hood” test, which requires drivers to identify different parts of a bus engine.
Rittenhouse thinks bus companies can also help new drivers by going beyond the required training and preparing them for the realities of the job – including children and potentially discontent parents.
“Every school bus driver has to deal with all those things. We’re asking a lot of these people – 38,000 of them every day get up and go drive a school bus in the state of Pennsylvania. School buses are the safest form of land transportation out there, by far,” Rittenhouse said. “There are a lot of good people getting it done everyday. That doesn’t mean we can’t work at it and improve as well.”