WESTERVILLE, Ohio — The latest research shows out of every 100 bus routes across the country, 25 of them were without a bus driver last year, according to Randy Snyder, transportation manager for Westerville City Schools and Ohio Association for Pupil Transportation.

What You Need To Know

  • The shortage cost Westerville City Schools $50,000 this school year and students 34 hours of classroom time at elementary schools 

  • The district increased incentives to attract new drivers by as much as 10-times the original incentives 

  • Schedules and routes have also been modified for the upcoming school year 

  • Westerville City Schools hopes to hire 15-20 more drivers before school starts again 

As the district tried to make adjustments during this past school year, officials said it was tough to even plan in advance for what shortages would look like from day to day because most of the time they wouldn’t know until 5:30 a.m. each morning how many drivers would be out sick.

That’s on top of the original shortage, so delaying school and releasing kids early was necessary. It should be noted that while students did miss hours in the classroom, the district said, “All buildings met the state-required number of instructional hours, which is 910 hours in grades K-6 and 1,001 hours in grades 7-12.”

School bus drivers like Ann Tuller said although it was tough this past school year to manage the adjustments on any given day, she, like other drivers just hoped people would understand, that they as drivers did the best that they could, with what they had while getting kids to school in a safe manner.

For the kids, she acknowledged that it was hard on them as “a lot of kids had their pick-up times affected all year round because there wasn’t a permanent driver or it was filled by a sub.”

Knowing that school would be delayed or there would be early releases, Tuller noted she worked with parents to help them arrange pick-up times especially when it became a challenge with work schedules. During that time, Tuller explained that it was “an opportunity to get to know parents and grandparents better.”  

Even so, Snyder said knowing “the pool of non-CDL holders or non-current school bus drivers is only so deep,” they had to go back to the drawing board to make changes for the next school year.

"Now is the time to look at folks that may have been school bus drivers in a previous career or a previous district or even a current district and increase our opportunities to recruit them to come to Westerville," Snyder said. To sweeten the pot, the monetary incentives have now been multiplied “by 10 to go up to $2,500. And then the other incentive whether it was the referral or non-CDL holder—those were doubled,” explained Snyder.

As for students, they’ve modified bus routes, bell times, school start times to “allow more drivers, more opportunities to cover additional assignments.” Snyder said they won’t know until the school year gets started what kind of impact these changes will have on everyone. Yet, if they need to make changes again, they’ll be ready to do so.