Lauderdale County School District officials continue to rethink school transportation practices as a shortage of bus drivers persists.
The county school district, like others nationwide, was already dealing with a shortage of school bus drivers when the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the situation to a critical point, said LCSD Transportation Director Tim Moore.
New entry-level federal training requirements for first-time school bus drivers have complicated the situation even more, he said.
“Ever since COVID, like everybody else, we have had some people decide they were not going to drive for one reason or another, and now we are to the point where we are short of bus drivers,” Moore said.
To address the crisis and rising fuel costs, the district has been examining individual bus routes across the county in order to realign routes based on current population patterns. Many of the routes had not been looked at in years.
“We had 97 full-time routes. We are going to be down to 86 this next year,” Moore said.
The district has been able to consolidate some routes in order to get the most students on buses without the buses being too crowded, while also keeping riding time for the students to a minimum. The Northeast and Clarkdale bus routes were consolidated last school year, and the Southeast and West Lauderdale routes will be this coming school year.
“We call it optimization,” Moore said. “We are looking at the number of kids on buses, we are looking at how long the routes will last, and we are trying to determine the best routes to operate efficiently without keeping the kids on buses too long.”
The district needs 86 full-time drivers for its bus routes, along with several substitute drivers, he said. The district is still short several drivers.
Replacing those drivers who retired following the pandemic has not been easy, especially with the new Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Entry-Level Driver Training (ELDT) regulations that went into effect in February 2022. The new regulations set minimum federal requirements for training that entry-level drivers must complete before they are permitted to test for their Commercial Driver’s License (CDL).
Those requirements added one to two days of extra training for anyone wanting to obtain a license to be a school bus driver, Moore said.
Anyone wishing to be a bus driver must pass the general knowledge CDL permit test with air brake, passenger and school bus endorsements.
Then, they must complete the ELDT training with the county school district, which can take up to two days and includes roughly eight hours of classroom instruction and six hours of driving instruction.
ELDT is on top of the training already required by the Mississippi Department of Education, which calls for four hours of classroom training followed by a hands-on test.
“The ELDT training added a step,” Moore said. “Previously, you just had to get your permit with the four endorsements and then you could begin the MDE training.”
Now, it takes from three to four days for someone to complete the training to be a bus driver once they receive their CDL permit, and many people are not willing to invest that much time when they are not getting paid to do it, he said.
“We were already having a tough time getting drivers, now the requirement has gone up, which makes it that much harder to get and keep drivers,” he said.
For those who complete the training or who already have their CDL and endorsements, driving a school bus is a good way to make extra pay, Moore said. The district also offers health insurance benefits for those drivers who are interested. Bus drivers generally work from 6-7:30 am. and 2:45-4 p.m. Monday through Friday for 183 days a year.
Anyone interested in becoming a bus driver for the county school district is encouraged to contact Moore at 601-485-0849. The district’s next ELDT training is scheduled for July 17 and MDE training for early August.