The past academic year was a rough one for school transportation in Monroe County, Indiana.
Keri Miksza鈥檚 daughter, an 8th-grader, was regularly arriving 15 minutes late for her first-period math class during the first part of this school year. She could drive to the middle school by car in 10 minutes, but her daughter regularly spent 45 minutes to an hour each way on a bus so crowded that many students had to stand.
鈥淚 never thought to ask, 鈥楬ey, how crowded is your school bus?鈥欌�� said Miksza, who is the chair of the Indiana Coalition of Public Education for Monroe County. 鈥淵ou just assume everybody has a seat.鈥�
Drivers in the district doubled back two or three times each day to cover bus routes. Parents puzzled over when, or whether, buses would pick up their children. Substitute drivers squinted at handwritten descriptions of routes they had never traveled.
In a single month, on average, 32 buses were late at least once to their destination, and 10 of those were late more than seven times, a consulting firm hired last fall by the district found. The average late bus was four to seven minutes behind schedule. And the students most likely to be late? Students from low-income households鈥攖he ones whose parents didn鈥檛 have another way to get them to school.
It wasn鈥檛 hard to understand the origins of these problems. The district typically employs 120 bus drivers to transport roughly 9,000 students to its 21 buildings daily. This past year, only 80 of those staff positions were filled.
鈥淲e looked at, can we live with what we have?鈥� said Adam Terwilliger, the district鈥檚 assistant director of business operations. 鈥淚t became a matter of, it鈥檇 be educational malpractice.鈥�
The plight of Terwilliger鈥檚 district likely rings true for districts large and small in all 50 states.
When schools lack adequate staffing, students who need the most support suffer most. Students with disabilities and English-language learners lose out on or have less access to specialized services. Students from poor families, and rural students who live far from their school building, lose convenient free transportation and crucial learning time in school. And all students who need extra academic help miss out on instruction when teachers and support personnel are stressed, demoralized, and absent.
Studies show that students ; ; and, particularly for students of color and students in high-poverty schools, .
Staff shortages in one area have ripple effects elsewhere. When buses can鈥檛 run on schedule, teachers fret about the safety of their students finding other means to get home. When substitute teachers aren鈥檛 on deck, schools beset by COVID outbreaks have no choice but to shift to remote learning, trim school hours, or cut extracurricular activities. When paraprofessionals are hard to come by, teachers have to fill the gaps while juggling their regular duties.
Plus, 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 attract your best, most competent people with poverty wages,鈥� said Joanna Miller, a school bus driver in Kalamazoo, Mich., who serves as president of the Kalamazoo Support Professionals union.
It鈥檚 always been challenging for schools to hire enough qualified teachers, instructional aides, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, crossing guards, and the other staff members who keep a school day humming. But for many school and district administrators, those challenges have never been more daunting.
Shortages of qualified teachers regularly generate headlines and draw comments from politicians, as during a recent congressional hearing on those subjects. But the discussions often leave out the millions of other people in the K-12 workforce who are critical to the smooth functioning of schools鈥攁nd optimal learning for students.
That workforce is frustrated, too. Three-quarters of paraprofessionals, school transportation workers, and other classified school employees who answered a nationally representative EdWeek Research Center survey in early May said staff shortages are at least a medium-sized problem in their district. Nearly 2 in 5 said staffing is a major problem. Fourteen percent said it鈥檚 a crisis.
These problems show few signs of slowing down. Slightly more than a quarter of surveyed paraprofessionals and school transportation workers said they鈥檙e likely to leave the K-12 profession in the next year. Of those, 70 percent said pay was a major reason.
Raising wages isn鈥檛 enough
Even after boosting wages and dangling benefits, districts that never struggled to hire before are finding a dearth of candidates for open positions. Districts that perennially fall short of adequate staffing levels are feeling the stress more than ever. These problems haven鈥檛 subsided even as in-person schooling returned.
The Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union, which covers four school districts in southeastern Vermont, used to regularly get 50 applicants for an open teaching position. Now, 鈥淲e鈥檙e doing a happy dance when you see something break double digits,鈥� said Katie Ahern, the supervisory union鈥檚 director of student support services.
Candidates for special education assistants are almost impossible to find, she said.
Some of the obvious solutions to these problems are proving insufficient.
The EdWeek Research Center survey asked all respondents to list a percentage raise they could get that would make them much more likely to stay in their current job. The average answer was 20 percent. Respondents indicated a one-time bonus of $2,219 per year would make them much more likely to stay.
Most districts struggle to approach even a fraction of that increase. District leaders in Denver recently proposed increasing the minimum wage for school employees from $15 to $20 over three years鈥攁 far cry from staff unions鈥� request for a $33 minimum and annual 5 percent cost-of-living increases. Paraprofessionals in Madison, Wis., recently walked out of work to push for a 5 percent pay increase, but the district so far has only agreed to raise wages by 2 percent.
Wages and benefits make up 80 percent to 90 percent of most districts鈥� annual operating budgets. Compensation can only increase as much as available local, state, and federal funding will allow. Budget pressures from declining enrollment and surging inflation are shrinking opportunities for growing districts鈥� revenue. Short-term pandemic relief aid will expire in two years.
In Monroe County, the district鈥檚 starting salaries for bus drivers were already higher than in many other nearby districts.
鈥淚t鈥檚 like a submarine underwater and you鈥檝e got four doors open,鈥� Terwilliger said. 鈥淵ou increase pay鈥攖hat closes one of the doors, but water just rushes faster through the others that aren鈥檛 addressed,鈥� like outdated technology, route complexities, and benefits.
Districts struggle to recruit in areas where housing is scarce
Another major challenge for recruitment is a nationwide deficit of affordable housing.
The Chinle school district on the Navajo reservation in northeast Arizona is short 17 bus drivers, 24 teachers out of roughly 250, and two principals.
Housing is a major culprit in the highly rural area, where some of the district鈥檚 3,200 students regularly commute an hour and a half one way to get to school. Quincy Natay, the district鈥檚 superintendent, said he鈥檚 seen several instances where the district hires someone new, they arrive on a Friday afternoon in a U-Haul van, and by Monday, they鈥檝e changed their minds and left.
鈥淵ou鈥檙e living right next door to where you work,鈥� Natay said. 鈥淚f it鈥檚 not nice, that can be a distraction.鈥�
The district owns 3,800 housing units, but they haven鈥檛 been updated in nearly 30 years, and they鈥檙e starting to fall apart. The district receives federal funds through the Impact Aid program to offset the lack of revenue from property taxes, but housing doesn鈥檛 qualify for construction grants through that program, Natay said.
To find drivers, Natay鈥檚 team has tried everything: raising wages, fully subsidizing employees鈥� health insurance, offering sign-on bonuses and retention stipends, and paying for new drivers鈥� license applications.
But no matter what they do, the reality doesn鈥檛 change. Some drivers defect to more-specialized jobs in the construction industry, which pays better. Others move off the reservation, or find employers who take less money out of paychecks for retirement funds.
The district gets transportation funding from the state per mile traveled. With far fewer miles traveled this year because of driver shortages and some students learning virtually, Natay will have fewer funds to spend on maintenance, which is crucial in a district where buses travel on poorly maintained or unpaved roads they weren鈥檛 designed for.
鈥淭he work seems to never end,鈥� Natay said.
Jobs in schools are a tough sell
The path to improving schools鈥� staffing woes is steep.
These jobs are hardly getting easier. COVID continues to spread and shows no signs of disappearing. Millions of students have lost instructional time and large numbers have experienced acute mental health challenges that may take years to address. High-profile school shootings, while statistically rare, raise fears for some educators about their safety. Political rancor is escalating tensions in many communities, and those tensions often spill over onto administrators, teachers, and school staff just trying to help students succeed.
Greg Tucker, an English teacher at Pajaro Valley High School in Watsonville, Calif., always thought he would retire several years after the minimum age of 55. Now, at 51, he鈥檚 struggling to imagine staying longer than he has to.
The district, home to a major hub of agricultural production, is seeing particularly sharp staffing challenges in its elementary and middle schools, Tucker said. Soaring housing costs in the San Francisco Bay area are straining families and educators alike.
The time Tucker spends in his regular classroom remains fulfilling. But he frequently gives up his preparation period to cover for another class that has lacked a regular teacher all year. That means he has to scramble at home to catch up on grading or plan future lessons.
When he fills in for a class with no permanent teacher, he feels like it鈥檚 an uphill battle to do his job well.
鈥淚n a year after the pandemic when kids are trying to get to a place where they鈥檙e re-acclimating themselves with structure and education and their own abilities, to not have a constant presence there guiding them makes them feel hopeless,鈥� Tucker said.
What to do when systemic solutions haven鈥檛 appeared
If staff shortages are here to stay, and without a systemic solution in sight, districts will need to get creative.
In Indiana鈥檚 Monroe County, middle and high schools currently start at 8 a.m., and elementary schools start at 9 a.m. Starting next year, the district鈥檚 buses will shift from a 鈥渢wo-tiered鈥� system, with two start times across the district, to a 鈥渇our-tiered鈥� system, in which schools will start at four different times to allow drivers more breathing room to traverse the area.
High schools will run from 7:45 a.m. to 2:40 p.m., middle schools from 8:10 a.m. to 3:05 p.m., some elementaries from 9 a.m. to 3:45 p.m., and the rest from 9:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m.
Consultants recommended an even larger spread of school start times to ease transportation issues. But before making these changes, the district surveyed nearly 2,800 families and found that 82 percent were opposed to start times changing by an hour. Only half of respondents said they鈥檇 support the smallest possible start-time change of 15 minutes, according to the survey data.
Drivers will get a $2 an hour increase in pay, and they could get an extra 25 cents if the district鈥檚 voters pass an operating referendum this fall. New tablets on each bus will help drivers navigate their routes with more clarity.
The district will also expand before and after-school care offerings to help families who might be inconvenienced by the changing schedule.
Some families still have trepidations about the new start times, said Miksza, the parent of an 8th grader. Parents of multiple kids attending different schools, or of kids who participate in early-morning group activities like band that take place at other school buildings, are worried how those logistics will change. Some parents would prefer elementary schools start earlier than high school鈥攂ut asking elementary school students to traipse to the bus in the dark could be a non-starter, Miksza said.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 envy the school district trying to figure this out,鈥� Miksza said. 鈥淵ou feel like there鈥檚 no best way, but we have to find a better way.鈥�
Some drivers are also worried about a feature of the tablets that will tell them which roads to take for the most efficient route to students.
Terwilliger knows the new approach won鈥檛 be perfect. But he鈥檚 hoping it will create a better experience for current students and staff, and eliminate the need for more hiring that doesn鈥檛 appear possible.
鈥淲e鈥檙e planning on a strategy that with more feedback will only get better,鈥� he said.
Educators are persevering under difficult circumstances for the sake of their students.
Joanna Miller, the driver from Kalamazoo, said students who rode her bus on a 3rd-grade field trip have recognized her on the street years later. She loves building relationships with students, and wants to keep doing it.
鈥淲e鈥檙e here because it fulfills us, professionally and emotionally,鈥� Miller said. 鈥淲e should not have to struggle to take care of ourselves and our families to do this.鈥�
