JEFFERSON COUNTY, Mo. — As the bus driver shortage continues, some St. Louis area school districts are stopping transportation services for students who live close to a school for the upcoming year.

What You Need To Know

  • Fox C-6, Parkway and Rockwood school districts will not be providing transportation to students who live within one mile of school

  • Not having enough bus drivers has forced many school districts to only provide bus services that are required by the state, which is for students who live 3.5 miles or more away

  • The bus driver shortage is across the market, according to Ziegler, where private bus companies also are feeling the impact

  • Districts may be having trouble filling bus driver positions is because of the difficulty of the job compared to other less stressful commercial driving jobs that could offer better pay

The latest school district to announce bus changes was Fox C-6. A letter sent to families says the district was unable to fill all its 13 bus driver openings and “has made the difficult decision” to eliminate bus service to neighborhoods within one mile of all elementary schools and within two miles of all secondary schools.

The letter states that the district has “been very fortunate” to provide bus service for all students for many years.

Both Parkway and Rockwood school districts have made similar changes and will not be providing transportation to students who live within one mile of school. This will be Rockwood’s second year in a row implementing the change.  

Not having enough bus drivers has forced many school districts to only provide bus services that are required by the state, which is for students who live 3.5 miles or more away.

“The majority of our districts in the past have probably gone above and beyond what would be mandatory by the state, so transporting inside of a mile, things like that they were doing. They’re getting away from that just because we don’t have drivers enough to staff routes in that manner,” said Paul Ziegler, CEO of Education Plus.

Education Plus is a nonprofit educational service agency "that collaborates with member districts and the region to provide leadership and resources to support learning, equity and innovation to maximize student success."

A reason why districts may be having trouble filling bus driver positions is because of the difficulty of the job compared to other less stressful commercial driving jobs that could offer better pay, according to Ziegler.

“When you think about a job driving a vehicle as big as a school bus while trying to monitor the behavior of students on that bus, I think that’s a difficult job,” he said. “There’s a lot of responsibility and accountability in driving a school bus with maybe 40 kids on it.”

“I can probably drive for Amazon (or) any package distributor (of) a similar size vehicle or even smaller with my commercial driver’s license and not have to worry about monitoring student behavior and probably make more,” Ziegler said.

The bus driver shortage is across the market, according to Ziegler, where private bus companies also are feeling the impact.

“I think private employers probably have the ability to utilize a bonus structure that may be questioned by a tax payer,” Ziegler said. “I think, overall, the idea of working for a local school district is still attractive for some.”

With just weeks left before the start of school, multiple school districts also are struggling to fill teacher and staff positions. Ziegler said that may be due to the shift in the way people want to work.

“I think working from home has become something that’s very attractive for many of our community members. There’s not a way to work from home and be a custodian for a school district. There’s not a way to work from home and be a building secretary or a building administrative assistant at an elementary, middle or high school,” Ziegler said.

“If I’m somebody that looks at the job market and there’s a lot of vacancies out there, there’s some jobs that will be more attractive than ours, not only from a salary standpoint, but the ability to work from home.”

He added that schools are very set in time and do not allow for working time flexibility.

A potential way to attract people to school positions is to lean toward those who have children in school where their work schedule can align with their children’s schedule.

“The ability to be on the same schedule as your children whether that’s holidays, days off, breaks, that has been and will continue to be kind of a perk being in schools,” Ziegler said.

“When you have children that are also in that same school, if we close for a week at Christmas,  everybody’s off for that week, you’re going to be able to be at home with your kids.”