With the new school year, some changes with the buses have caused problems for students. From a shortage of drivers to routes being merged, there is a lot going wrong with the bus system, and there is no one group whose fault it is. Bus drivers are underpaid, leading to people just not wanting to be a bus driver, and due to the lack of pay, there aren’t enough bus drivers to go around. This leads to double or triple routes, route merging, and a lot more struggle getting home than it needs to be for some students.
In WCPSS, the average bus driver gets paid $15 an hour for 7 years of working. To start, they get $12.55 per hour. This is a big problem, as there are part-time jobs that are easier and pay more readily available. With pay that low for the hard work they do, it’s no wonder fewer and fewer people want to be bus drivers. As a result, every school is understaffed, leading to it taking longer for everyone to get home, and even more work for the underpaid bus drivers. The worst part of all of this is that people who don’t know about the situation will naturally blame the drivers for taking longer to get everyone home when they are doing the best they can with what they have.
On the first day of school this year, there was an incident with bus 25 where there were seven or eight people who had to be left behind by the bus because there were too many people on it. The reason this happened is that there were two buses for that area last year, but they were merged into one, barely being able to hold all of the people who needed to get home. One of the people who couldn’t go home, Michael Xu, had this to say, “So bus 25… It was overcrowded so they didn’t have enough room to store all of us. And the people who got left behind got picked up by another bus later, and I was one of the people who had to take another bus. The days after that, they had us stand in a line to make sure we weren’t over capacity.” When asked why he thinks the situation happened in the first place, he said, “ I think it’s because of the sheer amount of people, especially the horde of freshmen, and since it was the first day no one knew what was going on, but I think it’s getting resolved, with people being moved to other routes and whatnot.”
There are a lot of issues that are out of the schools’ control, like how much the bus drivers get paid. That would have to be resolved by the county, and state legislature. However, some things could be changed at the school that might make the situation better. Logan Masterson had this to add, “I really don’t like the bus situation. I think they could handle it better. I think like if they get out the bus with the most kids first, it would make more sense, because then kids who have to go another rotation or like a second time, they can do that because they get rid of the most people first.” His sentiment that the most crowded buses can go first makes a good amount of sense since if more people were cleared out sooner, extra routes could be figured out after the fact.
Overall, the issues with the buses are caused by a multitude of factors, none of which can be easily fixed. However, in order to get started in the right direction, bus drivers absolutely need a pay raise. Bus driving is a lot harder of a job than it seems, and if they are getting paid less than a lifeguard or a drive-thru worker, then they are just going to go for other options. If the county and state agree to pay them more, they will stop quitting the job, and new people will actually be interested in taking it. That would solve the other problems with the lack of drivers resulting in 2-3 routes per driver.
