The school bus driver shortage in the Sudbury area has been largely alleviated a month into the school year, as have school bus delays, said the director of the Sudbury Student Services Consortium.
Renée Boucher, executive director of the consortium, which co-ordinates school bus transportation in this area, said when school started, she had two bus drivers who were “doubling up” — doing two routes.
That caused those routes to be 45 minutes late in the morning and half an hour late in the afternoons.
“That's no longer the case,” Boucher said. “We no longer have those doubling delays. However, we're still very much seeking new drivers.”
Local school bus companies are still running “pretty tight,” she said, and more drivers are needed to make sure there's enough people to cover all the routes in case of illness or holidays.
“If anybody is still very much interested, they can still contact the operators in our local area,” Boucher said.
She thanked parents for their understanding in the first few weeks of school. “A lot of them would say they would transport their children until we could find another school bus driver for that route,” Boucher said.
School bus driver shortages are province-wide, and have been getting worse and worse for the last couple of years, she told Sudbury.com last month.
Stay-at-home moms and retired people have typically worked as school bus drivers, but with fewer women staying at home with their kids and retired people wanting to travel, that's making recruitment hard for school bus companies.
At the same time, the job is only part time, with hours in the morning and afternoons, and extremely demanding, Boucher said.
School bus drivers have to deal with misbehaving kids at the same time as safely operating a large vehicle, she said.
If Boucher's comments don't dissuade you, and you think you have what it takes to become a school bus driver, she encourages you to contact local operators Leuschen Transportation or C&D Bus Lines.
Their contact information can be found here.
