Children at a Scarborough elementary school have found themselves regularly late for class — in some cases waiting as long as two hours — because of delayed school buses, and the winter weather isn't the only factor to blame.

Eleven-year-old Samuel Raby, a student at Saint Albert Catholic School, says his buses are late so frequently that he's missed entire math lessons.

"It was very frustrating," he said. "It was so cold," he said of the wait on Kennedy Road near St. Clair Avenue Thursday morning.

Raby's mother, Kathleen Lewis, says her son's bus has been late three times already in the past week, and twice the week before. And she's worried his grades might be affected if the problem isn't resolved soon.

"The bus is supposed to arrive at 7:39 a.m. but the bus didn't arrive until 9:36 this morning," Lewis told CBC News on Thursday.

Samuel Raby's mother, Kathleen Lewis, says her son's bus has been late three times already in the past week, and twice the week before. (Martin Trainor/CBC)

But while the past two weeks were particularly bad, she says, the problems have been consistent since the beginning of the school year.

A representative from the Toronto Student Transportation Group told CBC News that the organization only has records of the bus being late six times since the beginning of the school year.

On Monday, two-thirds of the board's fleet was delayed because of weather. One delay last week was due to a mechanical issue and the remaining three instances were drive-related, said Kevin Hodgkinson, a manager with the group.

The delays facing Saint Albert Catholic School may therefore be symptoms of a larger problem.

"There is still a driver shortage in the city," Hodgkinson told CBC News.

"Our school bus operators simply cannot recruit drivers fast enough to fill vacated bus runs. Certainly on those days when the driver was unable to do the run, there was likely more drivers off than there were spare drivers to cover all the routes."

The result: delays on those routes.

When a bus is delayed, Hodgkinson says, school bus operators are supposed to post that information on the Toronto school bus transportation portal. If parents are signed up for automated emails, they'll get a notification.

And in cases of significant delays, carriers are asked to contact families whose children take small minibuses to school make sure they're notified.

He acknowledges, however, that there may have been cases when an operator failed to post a delay in a timely manner, meaning the delay may not end up in their records.