Bus Driver Shortage In District 202 Expected To Continue All Year

Plainfield IL

29 September, 2021

12:00 PM

Description

PLAINFIELD, IL — School districts nationwide have faced transportation struggles from the start of the 2021-22 school year due to bus driver shortages. In Plainfield, School District 202 is no outlier. At Monday's Board of Education meeting, officials said they expect the shortage to run through the semester, "and in all likelyhood, this will be a problem all year." Anthony Arbogast, District 202's assistant superintendent for business and operations, said the district is currently creating a new format for transportation where parents can choose to drop students off at a nearby hub in order to limit the number of stops a bus has to make. "It's really become a 7-day-a-week effort, just trying to exhaust all efforts we can, and we will continue to explore any practical options to improve this situation," he said. "We definitely understand the frustration that the parents feel right now." Many bus drivers chose not to return to their jobs once schools reopened for in-person learning for a variety of reasons, Arbogast said at the meeting. Some reasons he outlined included an increase in pay at other jobs, the risk of COVID-19 exposure from unvaccinated children, and an unwillingness to be vaccinated or partake in testing. "Many states have stepped up to aid in relief for the school districts," Arbogast said. "So far, the state of Illinois has not provided any help to the districts in efforts to find drivers." Supply chain issues are also delaying parts needed to repair busses, according to Arbogast. He said it's one of the worst shortages in more than 30 years. Currently, District 202 uses two companies to bus students to school: First Student and Septran. First Student currently provides the district with 110 drivers, but they're 17 short. There are 57 drivers through Septran, but they're 18 short. The shortage has impacted students across the district. When students can catch a ride, route times are "significantly logner" than in the past. When drivers call off work, routes end up canceled or combined, leading to even longer times. Pick-up and drop-off times have changed, and field trips and extracurricular activities have been impacted. Some special education students haven't had access to transportation at all this year and haven't been able to attend school, Arbogast said. Similarly, middle schoolers haven't had athletic transportation so far this year, and that might not change any time soon. "Unless we see the numbers get better, we anticipate this will stretch into the late-fall/winter sports as well," Arbogast said. To help mitigate the problem, District 202 has tried a variety of short-term solutions, including a parent reimbursement program — either daily or $1,000 per semester — for families who have been willing to drive their kids to school. Officials have also offered testing and vaccination incentives and driver sign-on bonuses. They've tried optimizing routes, which has led to the longer drive times, and centralizing pick-up to reduce the length of bus routes. The district has also looked into a few solutions that weren't viable. One included paying internal staff to drive students to school, but it wasn't possible due to state Motor Vehicle codes that require a valid bus drivers' endorsement or permit and long wait times for approval. For similar reasons, staff couldn't hire ride-share or long-term cab companies. Public transportation wasn't an option due to the lack of a "strong public transportation system in Plainfield." Arbogast said he even called Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker's office to request the national guard help transport students to school, as they've done for some districts in other states, but his call wasn't returned. "It's very exciting to have our kids back in school this year. We want to be able to transport them properly," Arbogast said. "It's just something that due to this shortage of bus drivers has not been available for us and many other districts right now." (For more news and information like this, subscribe to the Plainfield Patch for free. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app; download the free Patch Android app here. Don't forget to like us on Facebook!)