- National school bus driver shortage how to#
- National school bus driver shortage drivers#
- National school bus driver shortage free#
1 to May 31, 2024.įor more information on bus rides and how to apply for the EXPRESS program, see and click on the “Learn more” button under the “Bus Transportation” section.You probably have fond memories of your school bus drivers. County bus passes will be valid for use from Aug. The application period will end April 1, 2024.
National school bus driver shortage free#
Students with an active DOE student ID number may sign up for a free county bus pass online beginning Aug. The EXPRESS County Bus Pass Program is still running for Maui, a DOE spokesperson said Tuesday. The DOE provided shuttles from the Wharf Cinema Center to Lahaina Intermediate and Lahainaluna High School as an alternative.ĭuring the 2022-23 school year, the DOE piloted a program called “Expanding Ridership to Educate Students in Schools,” or EXPRESS, which allowed subsidized county bus passes to be given out to high school students in grades 9-12 to help mitigate the impacts of the national school bus driver shortage. Public school parents in Lahaina complained about buses showing up early or late at stops, with one saying their elementary school student was on a bus for almost two hours trying to get home after school. Molokai and Lanai will not see any impacts, Tanaka said.Īt the beginning of last school year, eight bus routes serving Lahaina schools were suspended due to a shortage of drivers. The exact Maui schools and routes with modifications could not be immediately obtained Tuesday, though the spokesperson said parents and students on Maui can contact their school for information on routes. Maui and Hawaii island will have modified routes, some consolidated since last year, according to Tanaka.įor routes where there may have been a dedicated bus or driver per stop before, some have now been consolidated to one driver or bus making multiple stops, a DOE spokesperson said Tuesday in explaining the modified routes. Subsidized Kauai Bus passes are being offered to all affected students. Public transportation on Kauai is “not as robust” as that of Oahu due to its population, creating an additional challenge, Tanaka said.
National school bus driver shortage drivers#
The shortage of drivers will impact four schools on Kauai - two elementary schools, one middle school and one high school, totaling about 250 student bus riders. But it hasn’t done enough to cover the shortfall, forcing a suspension or partial suspension of bus routes for 10 high schools on Oahu, whose roughly 1,130 impacted student bus riders will instead be offered Honolulu City & County’s HOLO Card to be used on TheBus and Skyline, the newly opened rail system. Tanaka said there have been hiring pools and even hiring bonuses offered by DOE’s contractors to recruit more bus drivers. He explained that not just anyone with a commercial driver’s license, or CDL, can automatically qualify to drive a school bus, as student transportation qualifications are different. “There’s just not enough qualified drivers in the pool,” Tanaka said. He said the problem is not unique to Hawaii - Chicago, for example, is short 500 school bus drivers.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, there were 650 bus routes across the state and 650 bus drivers, said Randy Tanaka, DOE assistant superintendent for the Office of Facilities and Operations.īut the state has been short drivers “for the last two years,” as when the pandemic hit and school campuses closed, many bus drivers had to look for other jobs and haven’t come back, Tanaka explained.
With the 2023-24 school year approaching and public school classes set to begin the second week of August, the state is facing a shortage of 226 drivers in total, with heavy impacts mainly to Oahu and Kauai, DOE officials and the head of Honolulu City and County’s Transportation Services Department said during a news conference Tuesday on Oahu.
Some Maui public school students will head to campus on modified or consolidated routes, similar to last school year, as the island deals with a shortage of 29 bus drivers, the state Department of Education said. Molokai and Lanai schools will not be affected. Ten schools on Oahu and four on Kauai will have routes suspended or partially suspended. Maui will again have some modified or consolidated routes this school year due to a statewide shortage of school bus drivers, though no routes will be suspended. School buses transport students on Maui in January 2022.
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