By Jessica Brownjlbrown@enquirer.com

The region's largest school bus company, First Student, has been chronically understaffed this school year, leading to major delays in transporting students.

It blames a shortage of qualified drivers and special needs buses.

Some parents say the situation is beyond aggravating because their children have had to wait two hours at times to board the bus heading home from school.

First Student provides contracted yellow bus service for the 33,000-student Cincinnati Public Schools.

It buses CPS elementary school students, as well as students headed to charter and private schools in the district.

The company also serves the Reading and Wyoming school districts and this year added Princeton City Schools as a client, too. First student officials said that did not contribute to the staffing shortage and that none of the other districts were impacted.

CPS, in a memo to board members, said many transportation departments at urban school districts throughout the country are experiencing staffing shortages.

First Student spokeswoman Julie Treon said the company had an "unexpected turnover of drivers this past summer."

It also added a few routes at the beginning of the school year, which made things worse.

She didn't know exactly why so many drivers left.

"The only thing we can figure is we've all seen the economy strengthen a bit, so we're thinking that contributed," she said.

First Student attempted to fix the issue by bringing in 40 drivers from Michigan and Wisconsin and housing them in a hotel. But after Labor Day, many of the out-of-state drivers returned home.

To add to the woes, CPS officials said 40 other drivers failed to renew their required physicals, which means they aren't allowed to drive the buses.

That leaves the company short 11 to 15 drivers daily.

CPS and First Student are working to fix the problem.

Some of their solutions haven't worked. The district and First Student tried asking private and charter schools to change their start times. The schools declined. So they tried to borrow bus drivers from other vendors. None was available.

The company is working to renew the drivers' physicals more quickly, CPS said.

This week the district converted seven routes for special-needs students to Universal Transit System van service, school officials say.

First Student is also in the process of training 11 more drivers. It has added a few each of the last two weeks. If they pass their final test, the rest will be ready to drive Monday.

In a memo to school board members, CPS Chief Information Officer Jennifer Wagner said she expects the changes will create a surplus of 10 drivers to cover for absence and attrition.

"While this experience has been very challenging, we appreciate the collaborative problem-solving and desire to improve service to our students," she said.

Treon said First Student is working to ensure staffing levels will be high enough that this won't happen again if similar turnover happens next year.

"We certainly understand and empathize with some of the frustration parents are feeling in the delays to service," she said. "We're feeling OK about how we're managing the situation, but we're not satisfied."

But one parent says it's too little, too late.

"As a parent I'm not concerned about (the company) having staffing issues," said Brandi Ballew of Kennedy Heights. "Why would you pick up CPS, charter schools and Catholic schools as contracts if you can't bus all of them?"

The bus never came to take her boys, ages 5 and 6, to school at Silverton Paideia Academy on Sept. 15, she said. She had to drive them. And on Monday, the boys were more than three hours late coming home.

She said it's a big inconvenience to parents. The boys' father waited nearly two hours at the bus stop.

"The bus loads them up at 2:10 (p.m.). My kids didn't get dropped off until 6:02 (p.m.)," she said. "Kids can be diabetics or have anything wrong with them."

She also questioned why her boys once spent 30-45 minutes on the bus before being dropped off even though the school is only five minutes away. They got home hungry, needing to use the restroom and facing a night of homework.

She's beyond frustrated. "Before y'all picked up all these contracts y'all should have had all your ducks in a row," she said. "These are children. It's so unfair."

First Student transports nearly 17,000 students daily to and from school on 350 routes. Treon said the delays occurred in a "handful" of those routes. ■