Schools Rack Their Brains as Bus Driver Jobs Go Begging
In the past three years, Wake County has cut one in five bus routes, bumped children off the bus who live within a mile of their school, required others to walk farther to the bus stop, and now is considering starting some schools earlier in the morning.
Why? A shortage of school bus drivers.
Wake County, one of North Carolina’s biggest, is contending with a school system that has grown 25% to 160,000 pupils in the past decade and a supply of drivers that has fallen 18% to 740 in the same period. Supervisors regularly have to fill in.
