WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — The Palm Beach County School District says that there are still more than 100 bus driver jobs open in the transportation services area. Joe Sanches, who is in charge of transportation, says that the district hired 76 new drivers this year but also lost some.
“We still have over 100? Right now, about 111 jobs are open. But that number changes every day,” Sanches said. Sanches says that the district is always looking for new drivers, but in the meantime, other workers are helping out.
“We still have bus drivers with different routes, engineers who run routes sometimes, and other dispatchers who run routes. So that’s how we can pay and make sure our kids get to school.
Because there aren’t enough buses, the county is turning to private services to help.
“We’ve used some private transportation here and there to make up for the lack of some drivers,” said Sanches.
At first, the Department of transportation services asked the school board for an extra $7 million to help pay for some of this year’s and next year’s transportation needs. However, because costs were going up and more private transportation was being used, the department needed an extra $13 million.
“It’s mostly because there aren’t enough drivers. We have plenty of buses, but we need more people to drive them. Before, between 300 and 400 kids were driven to school by private cars. We now have close to 1,000 kids,” Sanches said.
EverDriven is one of the private companies that the area uses to get around. CEO Mitch Bowling says that more people using private transportation isn’t just a problem in Palm Beach County.
“There are a few reasons why we have. Some of it is because there aren’t enough school bus workers. But it’s also because the number of students we move is growing faster than the number of kids in general education,” said Bowling.
The district says that they mostly use private transportation for medically weak kids, and the cost of the nurses who travel with these students is part of this cost. Services include getting McKinney-Vento, Foster Care, and ESE kids where they need to go when there is no school bus path.
The district also has a program to repay parents who drive their kids to school. This means that if a parent wants to drive their child to school, the district will pay for their gas.
For new drivers, the Palm Beach County School District has rewards.
Before the school year started, the district raised driver pay to $20 an hour, gave them a $1,000 signing bonus, improved their benefits, and started paying them $15 an hour while they get their CDL training.
