11/12/2023 0 Comments School bus shortage in ct![]() How are we identifying a problem? How are we getting in front of it?” So we have a team of people here, it's like a symphony in place every single day. There are so many things – weather is unpredictable. “When you're running over 250 buses every day and transporting over 70,000 students every day, the margins are very small to keep the trains running on time,” he said. He explained that every district – especially large ones like FWISD – is pulling off a gargantuan effort to get students to school by bus. We spent a lot of time and energy looking for those efficiencies.” “Students want to know that they're going to see the same driver every day, just like they want to see the same teacher every day. “We literally stripped it down to the studs and said, how can we redo this entire thing to make sure what people need more than anything is reliable transportation? They need to know that a bus is going to be there every day,” he said. In addition to hiring more drivers, Coburn said the biggest part of fixing the issues they saw last year was making their bus routes more efficient than they ever were. Which meant no matter what we did, no matter how hard we tried, there were going to be students whose buses were going to be very late every day,” said Coburn. “The challenges a year ago – in our best case scenario, we were going to have uncovered bus routes every day. It reached a point where students were waiting for long periods before and after school, with not enough drivers to cover sick calls and absences. They’ve been trying to build that back ever since. In the last two years of the pandemic, the district lost about a quarter of its drivers. “We absolutely still need more drivers to keep our fleet strong and to make sure we can remain as reliable as we want to be.” ![]() And so we've made some changes to allow ourselves to be more efficient, and be able to do more with the fleet that we have,” he said. “More importantly, we knew that we had to change the way we did business. And so they're doing a lot and they get all the credit for the improvements that we have.”Ĭurrently, they are looking to hire about 30 bus drivers for a “reserve force” to help out with field trips and ease the strain on the schedule if drivers get sick, call out, or take time off. They earn every penny, they're still valuable. We increased their compensation last year. “So we were pleased – we were able to increase their compensation this year. And what we've asked them to do, they just keep stepping up, they just keep doing great work,” he said. They are the first people kids see every day and they're the last people students see every day when they get off of the bus. ![]() He said they’re in such good shape, that buses should run on time this week for the first few days of school. Fort Worth ISD Superintendent Discusses Safety, Staffing, and School Buses as Kids Return to SchoolĬoburn said his team has spent the summer hiring new drivers and completely revamping their bus routes.
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