Transportation

Addressing the National Bus Driver Shortage at the Local Level

The Westerville City School District continues to minimize the local impact of a national bus driver shortage by implementing a tiered approach to overcome staffing challenges and other logistical matters.

One of the district’s primary goals during the peak of the pandemic was to keep students attending school in person and learning from their teachers. This was made even more difficult to achieve due to a nationwide shortage of bus drivers and other staffing challenges comparable to those experienced by other businesses and industries. Supply chain issues also impacted transportation operations, but despite these challenges, district officials found creative solutions to keep our schools open and provide the services, sometimes at reduced levels, to which people have become accustomed.

The Board of Education approved an incentive program to recruit and hire additional drivers, particularly those who already hold a Commercial Driver License. The district is also reaching potential job candidates through social media and recruiting websites, as well as using alternative funding sources for a paid digital advertising campaign. Sophisticated audience targeting strategies have significantly increased the number of individuals visiting the district’s website to learn about employment opportunities with Westerville City Schools. 

The nationwide shortage of drivers continues today. As the effort to aggressively recruit and train drivers is ongoing, the district had to adjust some schools’ schedules for the 2022-23 academic year and create a tiered response to ensure all bus routes would be covered on days with significant driver absences. As a result of this and other factors, school officials were even able to restore student field trips during the school day, a practice that had to be stopped earlier.

Compared to the negative impact felt during the 2021-22 school year when some of these new measures were not in place, their addition significantly reduced the need for day-by-day adjustments and improved the district’s ability to meet the transportation needs of students and families. As a result, the district also regained a significant amount of previously lost in-person instructional time for students.

• During the 2021-22 school year, due to school day adjustments to ensure adequate bus route coverage, the district lost an estimated 293 hours of face-to-face instructional time with students. From a cost perspective, the estimated value of that lost instructional time was $18.13 million.

• For the most recent 2022-23 school year completed, as a result of route adjustments and our ability to keep our bus/van driver positions nearly fully staffed throughout the year, we reduced our loss of face-to-face instructional time with students to an estimated 72 hours and 45 minutes. From a cost perspective, the estimated value of that lost instructional time decreased to $4.72 million.

• In summary, compared to the 2021-22 school year, strategies implemented by district officials this year increased face-to-face instructional time by an estimated 221 hours (75%) and reduced the cost of lost instructional time by $13.41 million (74%).