If your child takes the school bus, you’re advised to check the Sudbury Student Services Consortium’s website every morning to see if their school bus is running.
The director of the bus consortium said the school bus transportation sector, like many other sectors, is experiencing a higher level of absenteeism due to the Omicron wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is on top of staff shortages already being experienced for the last couple of years by school bus operators struggling to recruit and retain staff, which has led to multiple routes normally being cancelled each week.
On Monday, the first day back to in-person learning for JK-12 students after a couple weeks of virtual school, there were already 17 bus route cancellations in the area – seven caused by a shortage of drivers, and another 10 due to drivers being impacted by COVID.
The number of cancellations was up to 21 on Tuesday. Weather conditions cancelled all area school bus transportation on Wednesday.
Consortium director Renée Boucher said there has actually been some improvement with regards to the number of drivers on staff by local operators, as several have recently been recruited and trained.
But it’s not just bus drivers that could be an issue to the system.
If enough mechanics, for example, were to call in sick, the consortium might have to cancel all of the school buses run by an entire school bus operator.
“We're asking parents to verify every morning,” said Boucher. “So our school bus operators are going to be contacting me every morning. I'll be putting an announcement out on our website (about) the routes that are cancelled.”
Due to a change in provincial rules, there will no longer be bus cancellations due to COVID-19 exposures on the bus, as long as there’s still a bus driver for the route.
“In the past, our public health would contact the consortium, and then we would notify all the parents, the schools and everybody who would be involved,” said Boucher.
“So now we don't we don't hear those confirmations from public health. So it's no longer something that we can share with our parents and schools.”
She said the province has provided school bus drivers, along with school staff, with N95 masks to wear while on the job.
School bus drivers, like students and school staff, are also being provided with two rapid COVID-19 tests each this week.
With the rise of Omicron, Boucher said that a lot of parents have decided to opt out of school bus transportation.
“Just a reminder to parents that if they're not going to be using this service to please let us know,” she said.
Given the decrease in the number of students on school buses, the consortium is now leaving the two seats in behind the driver free to lessen the risk of the driver contracting COVID-19.
Boucher asks that people be patient with school bus drivers as they continue to do a very difficult job. “It's a very difficult position for them,” she said.
A first-year bus driver who wished to remain anonymous shared with Sudbury.com their concerns about the school bus system during the current Omicron wave.
The driver said they are concerned about the fact that drivers will no longer be notified if one of the students on the bus comes down with COVID.
“How are we supposed to keep the kids safe on the bus when we are unaware that one of them had COVID?” the driver said. “How am I supposed to stay safe? We can only sanitize the bus so much and there’s no way we can keep the students six feet apart with a full bus load.”
Given the new self-isolation rules, the driver said, “I think at the end of the day there will not be enough students on the bus to justify having the buses run, as before the break there were lots of kids missing from countless buses, and we may have lots of drivers calling in sick due to this new variant.”
