![]() ![]() Waiving application fees for every applicant should be a no-brainer school bus driving is not a position that should be gatekept. For some drivers, this is a massive barrier and stops their chances at becoming a bus driver before they take a single training class. A study commissioned by the legislature in 2017 found that only 56% of school districts pay their applicants’ $260 upfront costs. So, what actions can the legislature take to help solve the problem? It begins with the driver training process. However, school absenteeism is bad, traditionally marginalized communities are the most absent groups, and school bus transportation reduces absenteeism. There isn't data that shows direct correlation between a lack of school bus transportation and an effect on disadvantaged groups. They also found that, “free lunch-eligible students - the most economically disadvantaged students - were more than twice as likely to be absent from school for more than 10 days as nonpoor students.” Emma García and Elaine Weiss, researchers with the Economic Policy Institute, observed that the largest share of three-plus days absent students were classified as Hispanic and Native American/Other. We also know that members of traditionally marginalized communities and lower socioeconomic classes have higher absence rates. Michael Gottfried, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, found that children taking the bus are three percentage points less likely to be chronically absent. However, we do know that school bus transportation correlates to fewer instances of chronic absence. North Carolina does not collect data on the racial/socioeconomic demographics of bus riders. Why? Because school bus transportation is one of the most important aspects of a child’s educational experience, especially for students in traditionally marginalized groups. This problem should be treated with much more urgency by the legislature. There are simply not enough drivers to transport students without major logistical headaches. For context, about 14,100 school buses run in the state each day. At the start of the 2022-23 school year, EducationNC reported that there are still around 1,300 school bus driver vacancies in North Carolina. So far, raising the minimum wage is about all the legislature has done to ease the stress on school districts and get them the bus drivers they desperately need. Yes, the legislature did raise the bus driver minimum wage to $15/hour earlier this year, but the shortage throughout the state has not been alleviated. One education policy problem that seems to be flying under the radar from a legislative standpoint? The school bus driver shortage. Fights over teacher pay, classroom funding, and even high school athletics seem to dominate any conversations about education emanating from West Jones Street in Raleigh. Readers of EducationNC understand that education in North Carolina…isn’t exactly a simple topic. Perspective | Common sense approaches to address bus driver shortagesĭecemPerspective | Common sense approaches to address bus driver shortagesīy Jake Patterson, EducationNC December 16, 2022 ![]() ![]() If you republish a story, please let us know by emailing Anna Pogarcic at email Anna Pogarcic at you have any questions.Please email Anna Pogarcic at you are interested in sharing a multimedia element. Other edits must be approved by emailing Anna Pogarcic at Photos and other multimedia elements (audio, video, etc.) may not be republished without prior permission. Allowable edits to the content of the piece include changes to meet your publication’s style guide and references to dates (i.e. The original headline of the article must be used.If republishing the story online, please provide a link to or a link to the original article in either the byline or credit line.Credit our team by including both the author name and in the byline.If your organization uses a paywall, the content must be provided in full for free. Our content must be republished in full.Please use the following guidelines when republishing our content. All of EdNC’s content is open source and free to republish. Republish our contentĮdNC is a nonprofit, online, daily, independent newspaper. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. ![]()
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