ST. LOUIS — Although the principal of Central VPA said she had nightmares about the first day of school, Kacy Shahid woke up Monday morning feeling optimistic.

Central VPA High School is one of the eight schools within St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) where bus service to students has been temporarily suspended due to the bus driver shortage.

The six high schools and two elementary schools affected have alternative transportation, and high school students have been offered MetroLink bus passes and parents have been offered gas cards until the problem is resolved.

Monday marked the first day of the 2022-23 year and George Sells, director of communications for SLSP, said the bus service suspension will last two weeks. People have been hired by Missouri Central School Bus company, but are waiting to take their commercial driver license (CDL) test.

“The CDL offices have been backed up because we’re not the only ones who are hiring drivers. That’s been the bottle neck for us and a number of other school districts,” Sells said.

“Once we get drivers through that first set, that should be enough to cover the routes for the schools that right now don’t have buses.”

He added that 49 drivers will soon be covering the 35 suspended routes and another 69 drivers are finishing their training.   

Attendance at Central VPA was around 90 percent on the first day with the majority of students being dropped off/picked up, and about 50 students used MetroLink bus services, according to Shahid.

“Although it was an inconvenience for all of us, I believe our families had a good attitude about it,” Shahid said. “We’ve tried to keep the lines of communication open and be very empathetic about the inconvenience as people’s jobs and family obligations made it very difficult.”

“Being empathetic has helped our families to understand that this not a Central problem, it’s not an SLPS problem, but it is a reginal problem. I’m thanking everyone for standing with us as we maneuver through this difficult time.”

For the eight schools that did not have bus service, Sells said the drop-off and pick-up of students went “really well.”

To ensure students get to school safely, Shahid said school officials are in direct communication with the school’s resource officer.

“We’ve kept records in terms of the number of students riding buses and making sure that our students are dismissing at a time where there is coverage so we can actually make sure that they’re safe as they’re waiting,” she said. “I think today went very smooth considering all things.”

At other schools in the district, there were some transportation glitches where some buses ran late and one did not make it, however, those are some common occurrences at the start of a new year, according to Sells.

“Very big picture, our transportation folks say that it went more smoothly than they anticipated, so we’re really excited about that,” Sells said.

This school year will be the first since the pandemic where students are back fully in-person, which makes Shahid feel “optimistic about this school year.”

Also this year, Shahid said she is amplifying students’ voices to build leadership skills.

“There’s a problem when we do that, sometimes we can give them too much voice, but I’ll take that risk and give them an opportunity to center their voices. What it does is it builds leadership capacity within the school,” Shahid said.

To help amplify those voices, St. Louis City Mayor Tishaura Jones announced that applications have opened for students to participate in a “Mayor’s Youth Cabinet” program. Jones visited Central VPA and met students toward the end of their first back.

The mayor’s program is part of Congresswoman Cori Bush’s “Congress in Your Class” program that will provide a platform for high school students to work with Bush and her community outreach team on issues happening in their schools.

Jones asked students, if they had a magic wand for the city, what would use it for? Some students said they would use it to hire more bus drivers, collect trash, “fix the killing rates,” stop the flooding, and one student said, “the trolley needs to go.”

“They had some really great responses about crime and public safety, about trash pickup, about potholes, so they had the same observations as many of our adults do,” Jones said during a press conference after speaking with students.

Jones said she visits schools often to talk with students about her career and answer their questions.

“I think it’s important to show that their mayor cares about them enough to talk to them on their first day of school, but this isn’t something that I do just once a year,” Jones said during a press conference after speaking with a class,” she said.

Before she spoke with students, Jones met with SLPS Board President Matt Davis and discussed how some of the $160 million, no-increase bond issue funds may be spent, such as fixing existing facilities and the possibility of either expanding or adding new facilities.

“As we start to do more economic development in north St. Louis, we’ll need to upgrade our facilities there, so we talked about how we can partner in that,” Jones said.

Additionally, Jones said the city and school district officials are working with the employment agency, SLATE, to attract more school bus drivers. The city also is working with the agency to hire people to drive its garbage trucks.

“We realize that there’s a shortage all over, so we’re doing everything that we can to try to attract more people to apply for these openings,” Jones said.

On the first day of school, SLPS was able to provide school supplies for every student in the district, according to Sells.

“There was a backpack waiting for every kid in the district with age-appropriate school supplies when they got to school today,” Sells said.

“We were able to start the year off helping our families in a way that we haven’t been able to do before.”