Augusta County's bus driver deficit

Julia Fair | The News Leader

Doug Conyers needs to start his day at 5:30 a.m.

His lesson plans for his 7th grade U.S. history class settle in the back of his mind as he makes his way to Wilson Middle School. It's well before dawn. Class won't start for almost three hours — Conyers needs that time to arrange the desks, warm up the school bus and drive everyone to school.

The kids who sit behind Conyers on the ride to school often sit in front of him during class instruction. His efforts as the teacher-who's-also-the-bus-driver may guarantee that some kids get to school on time, but it's part of a large and complex issue for Augusta County Schools.

Bus drivers are scarce.

Nationwide, about 91 percent of school transportation directors said they had a bus driver shortage, and a third described the problem as severe, according to a School Bus Fleet magazine 2017 study of 181 transportation directors.

“You could pick up the phone and call anybody in the commonwealth and they will tell you they’re short of drivers and short of substitute drivers as well,” said Augusta County Schools Superintendent Eric Bond.

Just south of Interstate 64, Nelson County Public Schools Transportation Supervisor David Johnson says they’ve kept their substitute driver ad open for nine years. He’s been able to recruit this year, bringing their staff to 50 drivers for 46 daily routes, but 56 would be more efficient, Johson said.

Augusta County is significantly larger, and so is their shortage. It started the school year with 150 drivers for 160 routes.

The two rural counties differ in more than the size of the shortage. The double yellow line issue is health coverage.

Steering into trouble

Augusta County Schools nixed the major part-time employee benefit in 2013. The school board needed to cut costs, and hoped to do so by offering a higher salary to drivers in lieu of the benefit.

Full-time drivers at Nelson County receive healthcare benefits, Johnson said. Part-time drivers are paid hourly with no healthcare.

"It takes someone looking for work obviously, but honestly it takes someone who is invested in your kids, your schools and your county to have an employee that you can retain," Johnson said. "Because it can’t be just about work and money."

In 2013 the decision to cut back healthcare benefits was all about having a balanced budget in Augusta County.

That benefit reduction made up $443,304 of the $1.043 million in cutbacks the board made that year, according to 2013-2014 school board budget.

Board members wouldn't know it for another five years, but the benefit of that cut would be buried beneath rising costs that may have been directly related it.

Since that decision, a third of the salaried bus drivers have left the county's bus fleet, and substitute driver expenses reached a half million dollars alone last school year — exceeding the dollars saved in 2013.

Bond said it's important to note that the healthcare costs should be viewed as recurring savings. If the school board saved on healthcare costs each year, Bond said it’s like they saved $2.2 million between 2013 and 2018.

In the same time frame, the total substitute driver expenses reached $2 million due to the loss of salaried drivers.

Payments to substitute drivers have increased 131 percent between when the county first cut benefits to drivers and the current school year.

In a cost-conscious county, Augusta County Schools has spent more money on fewer drivers, while seeing its retention efforts slide as its costs rise each year for substitute drivers.

But there's an additional negative impact that goes beyond money — kids are spending less time in class because they're getting to school late.

Double runs and late arrivals to school

That's “the thing I hate the most, is children are missing instruction time," school transportation director Terry LaFon said. “That’s what really hurts as an educator.”

The driver deficit caused many students to arrive to school or home 45 minutes to an hour late, according to LaFon.

“This inconvenience prompted many parents to drive their children to and from school,” LaFon said.

Sometimes, drivers need to load two groups of students onto one bus to get them to school on time. But that leads to overcrowding safety issues, LaFon said.

County school drivers need more time to complete runs — and double runs — in Augusta County than they would in Staunton or Waynesboro, Bond said. The county's size is part of the problem. It's the second largest county in Virginia.

Driver shortages are not isolated to county school districts like Augusta and Nelson. At the beginning of this school year, Waynesboro Public School district was two drivers short to fill 28 routes, according to Vermell Grant, assistant superintendent and director of transportation.

It took Grant three months fill one of those vacant positions.

Waynesboro school bus drivers have access to the school's healthcare plan, but Grant doesn't believe it's attracting new drivers to the area.

“Our teachers and our principals are working with those kids and those families to make sure they don’t miss instruction,” said Bond. “When they do miss, we get them caught up.”

Catching up

Conyers didn’t always have the dual role. At first, he drove to help with the substitute driver shortage. As time went on he could tell his help was vital.

If he was going to see them in his classroom, first his kids needed to get to school.

Augusta County Schools haven’t started a school year with more than 153 drivers since 2013, though it needs 160 to be considered fully staffed for regular routes, according to LaFon.

When drivers became scarce, teachers, nurses and custodians were offered a route and began serving a dual-role in an attempt to get the kids to school on time. That’s how Conyers got involved.

A few custodians and teachers have taken on routes, but it’s “not a number that’s been able to have any kind of impact,” said LaFon, who oversees 971 square miles in Augusta County full of kids that need to get to school.

Behind the double doors on each bus is a driver who overcame obstacles such as recruitment retention, reduced benefits and prolonged routes.

Conyers tries to help

Conyers started driving school buses in the late '70s when he was a senior in high school, driving every so often to earn some extra cash.

There weren’t any substitutes to cover routes in the beginning of this school year. With eight drivers out, Conyers decided to step up and return to his seat behind the wheel.

“A guy asked if I could sub for him,” Conyers said. “That’s where it kind of all started.”

As Conyers drove, the deficit grew. New hires would come on, others would leave. Between the start of the school year and mid-September, the transportation department was short as many as 14 drivers one day this school year; at best they were short only four. LaFon said they haven’t had substitutes to cover those routes.

Some drivers were out for medical reasons and others took jobs elsewhere, including the Department of Motor Vehicles and driving a bus for the Staunton City Schools.

Conyers kept driving and kept starting his day at 5:30 a.m.

To make it work, Conyers sets up his classroom in the early morning and knows he needs to be on his bus to leave at 6:10 a.m.

All before the 7:45 a.m. first period bell, he collects the kids and drops them off at both Wilson Middle and High School.

He utilizes his time at night to grade papers. His self-imposed bed time of 8:15 p.m. is essential to make sure he can do it all again the following day.

“The county is in need of drivers and I can drive, so it’s not a big deal for me to take three hours out of my day to provide that service,” Conyers said.

His bus is full, about 57 kids per load. Sometimes he needs to sit three to a seat.

Conyers has been able to get three teachers involved in taking on a bus route. Two of them are finishing up their bus stamp certification and one drives a car to transport kids to school, Conyers said.

Everyone is in the same situation, said Conyers.

"Their buses are full. That's just the nature of the beast," he said.

When the county cut benefits, drivers scrambled

“At the time, we had no choice,” said Tim Quillen, South River district representative on the Augusta County School Board.

In 2013, the board was faced with the task of sending the county government a balanced budget. To comply, the board voted to change part-time employee health insurance availability. Anyone hired after June 30, 2013, would not be offered health insurance for a part time position.

Employees hired before July 1, 2013, were either grandfathered in to the healthcare plan or opted out to receive a pay raise.

Just 95 drivers remain from that group.

About half chose to keep their health insurance. The others opted for higher pay.

More significantly, 55 have since left the job.

A driver hired before that date could keep their health insurance, along with a starting salary of $8,980 for the school year. A driver hired after June 30 received no benefits but was paid a slightly higher starting salary of $11,000.

The county told the school board to provide them with a complete list of items for them to add back in if extra funding became available, Quillen said.

Health insurance was requested to be funded again only the year after the initial cut, Quillen said.

It's been on Bond's informal list of goals to reintroduce the healthcare option for part-time employees, he said.

Bond attributes the decrease of drivers on the insurance plan to grandfathered employees choosing to opt for a higher salary and finding health insurance elsewhere.

They could have joined a spouse's plan or enrolled in Medicaid, a federal plan for low-income individuals.

Some simply found employment elsewhere.

If the board is able to afford part time employee health insurance, it will be another “attractive tool” for them to advertise for recruitment, Bond said.

Although he’s considered offering healthcare to part-time employees again, Bond said it might not be sufficient to attract enough drivers. He said he’s had informal conversations with neighboring school districts, which offer part-time health insurance, who still struggle with bus driver retention rates.

In Staunton, though, offering healthcare to drivers has been advantageous for bus driver recruitment, said Early McCray, transportation director for Staunton City Schools.

In July, the Staunton City School Board voted to foot the bill for employee health insurance. Before, employees could still get insurance but they would be responsible for the bill.

“I hope other divisions will consider this for employees. It helped me tremendously,” McCray said. He started the school year with about four drivers short. Now, he’s happy that he can say he’s fully staffed.

Augusta County Schools transportation staff has reported that health insurance would help them, too. About 98 percent of staff said that lack of health insurance was the reason people are not applying for bus driver positions, according to a bus driver survey the county conducted on 93 transportation staff members.

Recruitment as it stands

In order to be considered fully staffed, the Augusta County Schools would need 160 drivers. With the 2018-2019 school year starting with a staff of 145, they need to consolidate routes in order to provide transportation to kids throughout the county. With a full staff, LaFon said routes could be shortened.

Since 2013, the staff has not peaked over 153 drivers. The current school year had the lowest starting driver team, which continues a trend.

Over the past five years, there’s been a decline of drivers on staff.

“That is a direct reflection of our department consolidating routes in order to provide transportation services with fewer drivers,” LaFon said.

Not enough people who have completed the class have chosen to stay with the transportation department, LaFon added.

Out of each training session, only about 10 percent of graduated drivers end up driving a route, LaFon said.

“I like to think we’ve been trying to think outside the box and be innovative of what we can do differently and new to try and recruit and retain drivers,” Bond said, but added that significant barriers remain.

The certification course for aspiring bus drivers is divided into three categories: classroom instruction, behind the wheel without students and behind the wheel with students. The minimum classroom time is 24 hours and behind the wheel time is 24 hours.

Drivers need to attend every class session. The next available session takes place Nov. 26-29 and Dec. 3-4.

Classes are held at the Valley Career and Technical Center in Fishersville from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.

The low retention rate of graduates contributes to the small pool of substitutes Augusta County Schools can call on for help. In the 2018-2019 year, they had zero substitutes.

Bus drivers in training might change their mind because of the salary, a lack of benefits and the time required in order to obtain required commercial driver’s license and bus driver stamps, LaFon said.

School bus drivers are required to obtain commercial driver’s licenses, according to Virginia law. That could be time-consuming, LaFon said.

Those are the three main reasons people leave, LaFon said. Other times, the responsibility of keeping another individual’s child safe could lead drivers to decline the job.

LaFon said he was part of the group that talked to local legislators about the training time that hurt their recruitment rates. In March, Gov. Northam passed a law that reduced the amount of training requirements for school drivers who already had a commercial drivers license.

That law didn’t help the last group of recruits for the Augusta County Schools because they didn’t have that prior experience, LaFon said.

Federal regulations for school bus driver licensing hinders recruitment, Bond said.

"The licensing requirement is too stringent …. particularly for a part time job," said school board member Nick Collins.

The unemployment rate has an impact on recruitment, Collins said. When the rate reaches 9 percent, they tend to have more applicants. Virginia's current unemployment rate is about 2.9 percent.

“If we want to continue on taking down some of the barriers, to enhance our recruitment and retaining efforts, then it’s going to take more effort on the federal level vs. the state level,” Bond said.