HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — Pinellas County Schools bus trainer, Kevin Cobb, has been hiring and training bus drivers all summer long.
“Pinellas County Schools has been experiencing a bus driver shortage,” said Cobb.
Most of the districts across the country are experiencing this same shortage.
“We have made great strides this year in trying to increase our drivers,” said Cobb.
Even after a recent pay raise to $19.79 an hour an hour, Pinellas still needs about 30 more drivers.
It’s a problem Hillsborough County is dealing with too.
At last check, Hillsborough is short about 203 bus drivers.
“What happens now is a lot of our drivers basically work more. So our bus drivers that are there will do double runs, finish one run, get done and go for another run,” said Van Ayres, interim superintendent of Hillsborough County Schools.
Pasco County is no stranger to the issue either.
“This year, we have 274 routes. With those 274 routes, we have 41 open routes. So those are routes that are not covered by a driver, but we do have 18 relief drivers and that will be very helpful to us to cover those positions,” said Betsy Kuhn, assistant superintendent of support services for Pasco County Schools.
Although they’re looking to hire more drivers, school officials said they’re in a better spot than years past. Kuhn said it's important to remember that it's not going to be perfect.
“We’re not back to the 2017, 2018 time, the good old days, as we call it," Kuhn said. "We’re not back to those times for sure, but we’re not like where we were two years ago, where we were in a lot of trouble and down a significant number of drivers and were late to school many, many days for many students."
In the meantime, Pasco is slowly rolling out an app that parents can use to find out where their child’s bus is to help with delays and efficiency.
“It will also eventually allow for parents to see if their student got on and off the bus and to be able to get that information in real-time,” said Kuhn.
With hundreds of bus driver vacancies across Tampa Bay, that means routes will be impacted for students.
However, school districts are working around the shortage, continuing to hire into the school year to find the right people to transport kids to and from school on time.
“We’re the first face that these school students see every single day, and we greet them with a smile and that could set the tone for their whole education,” said Cobb.
Most area school districts are looking to hire bus drivers as soon as possible, including Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco.