Bus driver shortage impacts Winooski K-12 students; officials focus on a long-term solution
The Winooski School District is working with Student Transportation of America to train and license Winooski residents as bus drivers to address the bus driver shortage. Photo by the Winooski News.
Most Winooski kids aren’t riding the bus to school this fall because of driver shortages, despite an effort by the school district to train and license local residents.
In an email, Winooski School District officials told parents that the district’s bus partner, Student Transportation of America, does not have enough drivers to run Winooski’s bus routes as expected. Pre-K and special education students will still have bus access, officials said.
Several candidates that are Winooski residents are in training right now, but none will have met all the licensing requirements in time for the school year’s start, according to the Aug 31 statement. District officials hope they will onboard more drivers in the coming months, at which time transportation for the youngest students will be prioritized.
The announcement comes after the Winooski School District partnered with Student Transportation of America in the spring to recruit and fund training for city residents to become licensed bus drivers.
“The bus company kept saying to us that a lack of drivers is impeding our ability to expand service, so we felt like we were in a position where if we didn't do something, we would just see the same cycle,” said Nicole Mace, the district’s director of finance and operations.
Historically, because of Winooski’s small city limits, the district has not provided transportation for students who are not pre-K or in special education programs — a concern for many parents.
“[Winooski is] 1.4 square miles, but a mile walk in the winter and through streets that don’t have sidewalks is a real challenge and barrier for students and families,” Mace said.
Families started advocating for transportation, motivating the district in 2018 to provide buses during winter through a pilot program. Because the district does not own buses, it partnered with the South Burlington School District.
The program lasted for three years, but then the district ran into trouble obtaining bids for contracts from transportation companies.
“In 2021, sort of the height of the pandemic, we went out to bid again for that winter transportation and received no bids,” Mace said. “And then it happened again, this past winter. No bids.”
For this academic year, the district decided to move to a school-year model in hopes of obtaining a contract.
“This model is better for students anyway, but it would also make it more likely that we would receive a bid from a contractor because it's easier for a company to find bus drivers to work the whole school year, as opposed to just two and a half to three months,” Mace said.
Still, the district anticipated another year of bus driver shortage, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the spring, Mace and Superintendent Sean McMannon started talking with bus companies and state officials. A consensus emerged that the shortage was a problem, but folks weren’t sure what to do about it.
Then Mace turned to community leaders to look at the problem from a workforce development perspective.
“We have folks in Winooski who are interested in becoming bus drivers and obtaining their [commercial driver’s license] credentials, but there are too many barriers associated with the process because many of these folks do not speak English as a first language,” Mace said. “The systems that exist are not very accessible for them.”
Mace asked Student Transportation of America, the bus company partner, if it would be willing to work with translators and tutors in its bus driver training program to accommodate Winooski’s new American population. And the company agreed.
The district provided a grant to the Winooski Parents and Students Project — a nonprofit organization that provides translation, tutoring and other support services to New Americans — to help candidates obtain licensing.
To drive a school bus in Vermont, one needs a CDL Class B license with a school bus and passenger endorsement — which requires more than 100 hours of training and multiple tests and costs thousands of dollars. Candidates enrolled in the bus company’s program are paid for their training, and the district’s grant funds can be used for testing fees, which lifts a huge barrier.
But navigating the licensing process has been a learning curve, said Mace. Some candidates for whom English is a second language were told by state officials that they had to take written tests in English, but that wasn’t true. Candidates must attend bus driving clinics after completing the written tests, but none were offered anywhere near Winooski.
Despite the challenges — and the failure to get enough drivers as planned — Mace sees an upside: The district’s partnership could help create a roadmap for how districts elsewhere in the state could address driver shortages.
“To me, the upshot is, you don't know what you don't know until you support people navigating the process,” said Mace. “It's been great to see all the different entities involved be willing to step up and change the way they typically do things in order to be more accessible.”
According to the company’s website, Student Transportation of America operates more than 16,000 vehicles for upward of 300 school districts.
The Winooski News attempted to contact the district’s PTO for comment but has not heard back.