Being a school bus driver comes with lots of responsibilities, including getting the students to and from school safely and on time.
Counties across North Carolina are facing school bus driver shortages, which means some drivers have to take on extra routes and could leave some kids getting to school after the first bell.
In New Hanover County, there were 12 crashes involving a school bus in just the first month of the 2022-2023 school year because other drivers didn’t stop for a school bus, even with the stop arm out and lights flashing.
Pam Tressler has been driver a school bus for nearly 25 years. You could even say one of her first cars was a school bus.
“I started driving way back in 1984, when they let students drive buses,” Tressler said. “I had had a driver’s license for 6 months and at 16 and a half, I was driving a school bus.”
The love she has for driving buses she got from her mother, who also drove for New Hanover County Schools for 30 years.
“It was nice when we drove buses home because we were there together,” she said. “She’d go out in the mornings and start the buses up, you know when I was 16 and first driving, so it was nice.”
Tressler said it’s been a rewarding career. She knows she does more than just bring her students from point A to point B — she makes an impact.
“We’re the first people in the school system family that these children see in the mornings and the last one they see before they go back home,” Tressler said. “Just a simple good morning, you never know what kind of day somebody’s having, and to just see them smile or have them say it back, I mean it’s a rewarding job.”
Her kids’ safety is her number-one priority, but unfortunately, that’s not always the case for other drivers. She says 100 tickets were written in the last four months of school for people running her stop arm. In fact, cars have been routinely driving past Tressler’s stop sign so often that Spectrum News 1 was able to catch it on camera the first time Tressler’s bus stopped.
In North Carolina, passing a stopped school bus is a class one misdemeanor.
“If a child would’ve been crossing in front of my bus, then that child might no longer be here,” Tressler said. “All because everyone is in such a hurry, and it doesn’t take that long to stop.”
Tressler takes the safety and time of her students very seriously.
“The biggest responsibility we have,” she said, “is making sure these kids are delivered to and from school safely and on time.”
Despite all this, what’s been cutting into their time is the lack of bus drivers. Not enough drivers means that those they do have will have to pick up the slack, which sets everyone back — including the students.
“Not just for me but for a lot of people, we’re doing extra runs,” Tressler said. “It just puts everybody behind and everybody getting home later.”
New Hanover County Schools says they need 12 more drivers. On top of a starting pay of $16 an hour and North Carolina state benefits, the schools are offering a $1,000 sign on bonus as well as a $100 attendance bonus a week in an effort to encourage more drivers to apply.
It’s not just in New Hanover County, there’s a school bus driver shortage across the state.
Mark Strickland, the Wake County Chief of Facilities and Operations, said his routes are covered but the county needs 30 more drivers to ensure all students get to school on time.
In Mecklenburg County, there are 32 driver vacancies. In the Triad, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools is still in need of 58 more bus drivers. In Buncombe County, there are 17 bus driver openings.
