School bus companies get homework done, add drivers ahead of new school year
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- The month of August is like one long Sunday, and as the new school year approaches, school districts and bus companies are encouraged by their progress in hiring more school bus drivers.
"When you're talking about last school year, we were still just coming out of the pandemic, and people were still scared about being on a bus with people in close proximity," said Dave Brabender, a manager at Kottkes Bus Services. "This year we're in much better shape."
Kottkes is the contractor that provides transportation for Anoka-Hennepin School District, one of the largest in the metro.
"Wages have definitely gone up. In the last 14 months wages have basically gone up 23.6%, so that's a piece of it," Brabender added. "We have sign on bonuses, we have retention bonuses, we have driver referral bonuses. There's a lot of ways you can pick up extra cash."
There's been a similar game plan across the region, including Minneapolis Public Schools and St. Paul Public Schools.
According to district officials in Minneapolis, drivers have been offered a $3,000 retention bonus and a $500 referral bonus for each referred candidate who is hired. In 2021, a bus driver shortage led to MPS cutting 30 special education routes down to 13 as a pool of 170 drivers dropped to an all-time low of 90.
"Transportation has worked to fill buses to their capacity so we can best utilize our drivers," the district writes on its website. "This has meant asking families to actively request transportation for their students prior to the upcoming school year. Transportation will continuously monitor bus capacity throughout the school year and remove students who have not ridden the school bus for more than 10 days in a row."
In St. Paul, wages are up to $21 to $25 an hour from $18 to $20 range from last year; district administrators credit the American Rescue Plan for enabling them to raise the transportation budget by $4.2 million.
"We want to make sure that drivers who drive for SPPS are paid competitively so that we can continue to attract and retain high-quality drivers for our students," SPPS spokesman Ryan Stanzel told WCCO.
Despite the progress, districts and bus contractors are continuing their hiring blitz to provide for more flexibility and long term stability.
"We're trying to hire now because we know in the winter we will have some folks that go south for the winter," Brabender said. "We need to cover for those folks."