Bus drivers stretched thin as class returns

Risk associated with COVID-19 leads to a worker shortage

As they wait for reinforcements to arrive, Niagara school bus drivers are stretched thin in their first few weeks back to school.

Niagara Student Transportation Services (NSTS) executive director Lori Ziraldo said local schools have a bus driver for every route, but the company is sitting well below its target spare driver number.

“Based on historical absenteeism rates, we know that we need a certain percentage of spare drivers to cover all of our routes,” she said. “When there is a driver absence, we’re having a very difficult time covering the absence and it is resulting in delays sometimes.”

Ziraldo said its target number is about 10 per cent, covering both planned and unplanned absences including illness and holidays.

But NSTS, which provides busing for both District School Board of Niagara and Niagara Catholic District School Board, is “hovering around three per cent.”

The shortage of drivers began a year ago, as students headed back to the classroom for the 2020-21 school year.

Before the pandemic, Ziraldo said NSTS was in “really good shape for drivers” but when COVID-19 hit — and largely because of the demographic of NSTS bus drivers, which leans heavily toward early retirees aged 55 to 65 — she said the dangers associated with COVID-19 forced a number of drivers into making the decision to stay home.

“As we were getting closer to back to school, we did have some drivers who decided that they just couldn’t take that risk for themselves,” said Ziraldo.

And those concerns have continued into the new school season, with bus drivers either resigning or taking a temporary leave of absence.

“(School bus drivers) love the work they do and love the students they serve. But (they) have had to think of themselves during the pandemic and their own health, or the health of those they share a household with,” said Ziraldo.

“We respect the decisions that they’ve had to make, but, unfortunately, it’s reduced the number of available drivers.”

While Niagara Student Transportation Services said it has not experienced the same level of vacation requests as a regular school year, it needs extra drivers to ensure bus drivers can take days off, particularly if they are feeling unwell.

NSTS has a number of new hires, and many more applicants, but it typically takes at least three weeks to train new drivers to Ministry of Transportation specifications, said Ziraldo. Bus drivers also need to go through school board safety policies and emergency procedures, including student behaviour management, first aid and CPR.

“It’s not just licensing, it’s all the training that we invest in our bus drivers because they do an incredible job keeping our kids safe every day,” she said. “Bus drivers are highly trained, they’re highly qualified.”

The first few weeks can be challenging, and bus delays are often expected. Ziraldo said the first day of school last week had 77 delays, with 563 buses serving two to three schools each — a 97 per cent on-time rate. And NSTS is seeing improvements, with the number decreasing to 40 delays on Friday and 58 delays Monday.

“Some of it is just those growing pains as back to school routines are (established),” she said. “But, yes, some of it is when we have drivers absence. We are covering as best we can and sometimes we are having delays.”

Ziraldo encourages parents to look up potential interruptions on the NSTS website, download the BusPlanner Delays app or subscribe to received emails.

“We have received a whole bunch of applicants in the last week or two since we realized we were dwindling in numbers,” she said.

“As we’re getting through back to school and this, hopefully, temporary period of a driver shortage … we’re hoping parents are a little bit more in tune to the delay apps to receive the notifications.”