ALLENTOWN, Pa. - Sarah Williams Hernandez said she often received texts from her son's school bus company, saying they didn't have a driver available to get him home that afternoon.
That meant she'd have to pick up the boy from Lehigh Valley Academy Regional Charter School in Bethlehem or see if the company — First Student — could find a replacement driver.
Getting her son to school on time and dropping him off late also were problems, she said.
- School districts are seeing a shortage of bus drivers
- Parents say their kids are getting to school late and getting home late
- Drivers say students are rude to each other and to them
“I do think [First Student] is understaffed,” she said. The company did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday from LehighValleyNews.com.
Hernandez's story is not all that unusual.
Many parents in the Lehigh Valley are in school districts that are also struggling with driver shortages. And some districts are in the process of negotiating new collective bargaining agreements with drivers.
Frustration all around
Susan Mauser, CEO of Lehigh Valley Academy, said two First Student buses from the Allentown School District currently lack bus drivers, causing kids to arrive an hour after classes begin and wait long periods to be picked up from school.
Mauser said one bus has not had a driver since November, which has affected 61 of the charter school students. The other bus hasn’t had a driver for the past two weeks, which has affected another 57 kids.
"When you have kids consistently missing out on instruction because the bus isn't getting here on time or that are sitting here after school for an hour consistently because the buses are leaving or aren't arriving on campus until late, I certainly understand the frustration the parents are feeling," Mauser said. "And it impacts the students' after-school jobs and other extracurricular activities."
Mauser said in the fall, all of the school districts that send students to her charter school experienced problems at the start of the school year.
“They were just short bus drivers,” she said. “Really short.”
Mauser said things settled down as most districts were able to hire enough drivers to cover their routes.
The Easton Area School District is currently short 11 school bus drivers, said Brian Taylor, with the Teamsters Local 773, the union that represents bus drivers from First Student, the Easton Area and Bethlehem Area school districts.
“Children’s attitudes have changed, their behavior has changed. It isn’t easy dealing with children today as it was in the past, so it’s very frustrating.”Bob Boyan, bus driver in Easton Area School District
The district is spending $3,750 on a transportation consultant to help implement software it purchased that redraws bus routes, with the aim of making the routes more efficient.
Easton has been struggling with a shortage of bus drivers for at least the past few years. Students were getting to school or getting home late, so the district purchased software last year to design bus routes for efficiency instead of doing them by hand.
The district has had trouble implementing it, and Taylor said he doesn’t believe it’s been put into place at all.
Not appreciated
Easton Area School Board member Jodi Hess voted against hiring the consultant in January.
“I think part of the issue is that our bus drivers maybe don’t feel as appreciated or supported,” she said. “I think our bus drivers, our teachers, our staff in general… I think things are very different than what they were in the past.”
Dennis Hower, president of Teamsters Local 773, said the pay and hours can deter people from becoming bus drivers.
Bus drivers in Easton, whose contract is up in June, currently earn $24.16 an hour for a morning or afternoon run, which is two hours minimum. A kindergarten, mid-day or alternative education run is a minimum of an hour-and-a-half and pays $14.50 an hour. A field trip is $24.16 an hour.
'Children's attitudes have changed'
Bob Boylan has been a school bus driver in Easton for 10 years. He said he took the job after he retired because he was looking for something to do and wanted part-time work. He said he stays because he enjoys the kids.
But he also said many drivers get tired of dealing with students’ misbehavior and quit.
“Children’s attitudes have changed, their behavior has changed,” he said. “It isn’t easy dealing with children today as it was in the past, so it’s very frustrating.”
Boylan said students show a lack of respect, kindness or friendliness for one another and the drivers, which can test the patience of the staff. That along with less-than-ideal hours, pay and lack of benefits leads to a high turnover rate.
"I think the schools feel so limited now, with student rights and parental rights, that they're afraid to flex much muscle when it comes to discipline like suspending them from the bus," he said.
"You get a lot of issues with parents who are so defensive of their kids that when you say they did something, you get actual resentment from parents, 'Not my child, they don't do that.'"
Hower said he is negotiating with the Easton Area School District on a new three-year contract.
He is also negotiating with the Bethlehem Area School District to replace the contract that expired on June 30, 2022. Drivers earned $23.53 an hour under the contract.
Bethlehem schools Superintendent Joe Roy had no comment on the negotiations.
