Local school bus companies are coping with driver shortages, continuing a statewide trend that has some districts around the state worried that bus routes could get significantly longer for student riders. However, despite the short staffing, local districts don’t foresee that type of commute time increase for students this fall.
The driver shortage “isn’t something new,” said Jeff Finfrock, area manger for Student Transportation for America, which provides school bus service for ConVal. “This is a trend and this has been going on for several years, not only locally but nationally.”
According to Finfrock, STA has 13 locations in the state of New Hampshire and services over 30 school districts. In a lot of those areas, including ConVal, he said, STA “is not in a good place.”
“We are short-staffed in several places fairly significantly,” Finfrock said. “There’s just not a lot of people that want to do it anymore, and a lot of younger people are looking for full-time work with healthcare and significant wages and eight-hour days and that type of thing. And school bus driving is a part-time job, and you work in the mornings and afternoons and you work during the school year.”
To combat this lack of incentive, Finfrock said, advertising and recruiting is an ongoing, constant process.
“It never stops. We do it year-round, we’re looking year-round to get the best possible candidates to come in,” Finfrock said. Once they find these candidates, he added, it becomes a matter of training them – the state calls for 20 hours of education, but STA does more to ensure that drivers are ready.
As for this school year, Finfrock said that they’re likely to be short on drivers. “We’re going to do the best we can to get the students to school on time, safely,” he said.
This will involve looking at all the bus routes, he said. “We’re looking to mix and match and see if we can be able to do more with less,” he said. As to whether this could make bus routes longer, it’s too early to say.
Other districts in the area are facing the same issue. Mascenic Superintendent Chris Martin said that Community Transportation, the service that supplies transportation for the Jaffrey-Rindge and Mascenic districts, is struggling.
“Much like everybody else in the state, we’ll be navigating some challenging waters in terms of getting our kids where they need to go,” Martin said. Despite a driver shortage, she said, there is currently enough staff to get students to and from school without much change in routes, but issues may arise for athletics transportation.
According to Jaffrey-Rindge Superintendent Reuben Duncan, Community Transport has made both districts aware of that potential issue.
“I know Community Transportation is working diligently to try to rectify the situation and not inconvenience our parents and families,” Martin said. “I think it’s too early to pull the alarm bell.”
Martin’s trust in Community Transportation, she said, is absolute – “I can’t speak enough about the pleasure it is to work with them,” she said. “I think we’re in good hands. If anybody’s going to staff our routes, it’s going to be Community Transportation.”
Another local school bus service, Steve’s School Bus Service, works with Wilton-Lyndeborough Cooperative and is, for now, avoiding staffing shortages.
“We’re lucky right now,” said Stephen Brown, the owner. “We actually have enough, but of course we’re a small company – we only have five routes.” He himself is one of these five drivers, and one of his mechanics also drives.
One of the keys, he said, is maintaining flexibility with his workers. “You have to,” he said. “It’s not like there’s people lined up for the job, so you try to be as cooperative as possible – you never know, someone could quit at any moment and then if you had to replace them it’d be damn near impossible.”
As for Finfrock and STA, the search is still ongoing. “We could use all the help we can get,” Finfrock said, adding that he urges anybody who might be interested to check out their website. “We’re looking for good, quality people, and we’ll get them trained up and get them behind the wheel, and get the kids to school safely and on time.”