By Jessica Holdman
SCDailyGazette.com
COLUMBIA – School districts across South Carolina are scrambling to find enough people to drive buses. They have raised pay — some above $20 per hour — covered the cost of training and offered bonuses, but it’s still a struggle.
To help, a bi-partisan trio of legislators propose freeing up an additional source of workers — retired state employees.
Their bill would exempt retirees who drive a school bus from state law that otherwise stops their pension payments for the year once their earnings from a new gig top $10,000. It is among legislation pre-filed for the session that resumes in January.
“We’re just trying to find ways to recruit more people to drive buses,” Rep. Jackie “Coach” Hayes, D-Hamer, told the S.C. Daily Gazette. “I don’t think they should be penalized.”
This school year, bus drivers for K-12 schools make a minimum of $11 an hour. That’s after legislators put $17.3 million in this year’s budget to pay for a 20% boost in the state-provided funding. Districts supplement the pay with local property taxes.
But it’s often still not enough to make the high-stress job attractive, especially considering what companies pay people with a commercial driver’s license and the extra demands that come with being responsible for keeping children safe. The state’s training handbook for bus drivers is more than 200 pages.
Impacts on students
For its part, the state Department of Education is asking legislators for $10.6 million in next year’s state budget to pay $2,500 retention bonuses to bus drivers who remain on the job for the entire 2024-25 school year.
Nearly half of South Carolina’s public school students rely on buses to get to school. But districts were at least 440 drivers shy of those needed in 2023, according to the Education Department.
“School districts are struggling to find alternative solutions,” reads the agency’s budget request. “Parents are also facing challenges, as they scramble to make arrangements for alternative transportation or adjust their schedules to accommodate the changes.”
These shortages impact school districts beyond the Palmetto State. Administrators nationwide reported links between transportation and absenteeism, particularly for low-income students and those struggling with homelessness, according to an annual survey by the transportation company HopSkipDrive.
“Children are getting to school later and coming home in the dark,” said Debbie Elmore of the state School Boards Association. “The question is what do you do.”
Elmore has even heard of assistant principals taking up bus routes because somebody has to drive. She said her organization supports any efforts to address the issue.
The bill Hayes is co-sponsoring with two Republicans is similar to an exemption for retired teachers who return to K-12 classrooms.
Technically, that exception applies to retirees who teach at schools on “critical need” lists. Schools on one list have “below average” or “unsatisfactory” ratings, high teacher turnover and/or a high poverty rating, meaning at least 70 percent of their students live in poverty. The other lists hard-to-fill subjects. But the teacher shortage has gotten so severe, the vast majority of teaching jobs now fit that description.
“In those rural school districts, if we didn’t have flexibility, I don’t know what we would do,” said Hayes, a retired Dillion High football coach who still works at Dillon 4 as its operations director.
Recruiting retirees
This year, more than 2,300 retired South Carolina educators returned to the classroom to receive a paycheck exempt from the $10,000 income cap, according to the agency that manages retirement benefits for public workers in South Carolina.
In addition, about 20 retired police officers received the exception for working as a security officer in schools, according to the Public Employee Benefit Authority.
If lawmakers’ bus driver recruitment effort saw even one-fifth of the response the exemption for retired teachers did, it would be enough to fill all of the state’s vacancies.
At the start of the school year, Hampton County School District was 30 drivers shy of its mark, Elmore said.
Sumter County School District saw an improvement over last year after increasing wages from just over $12 an hour to $18. But it’s still seeking 32 more drivers. It needs at least 16 more to cover all routes.
A report from the Midlands district earlier this year showed one day where 40 percent of its nearly 150 bus trips either arrived to or departed from school late. One high school bus left nearly two hours behind schedule.
Horry County Schools, where about half of the district’s 48,000 students ride the bus, are still short 80 drivers, said Lisa Bourcier, spokeswoman for the state’s third largest district. She noted that past years were worse.
Doubling up
In response, districts are asking drivers to take on extra routes.
The state’s largest district, Greenville County, doubles up routes for about 25 drivers, meaning some students ride twice as long because there are more kids to drop off over a greater distance. More than half of the district’s 77,500 students ride a bus, said Director of Transportation Adam James.
High school students who ride the bus often don’t arrive home until 5:30 p.m., later if they attend one of the district’s magnet programs and go to school farther from where they live. Students who live in Greer, Simpsonville and Mauldin are most affected, James said.
Late arrivals to school are less common, he said. Even if drivers pick up students from the bus stop late, they still get to class before the tardy bell rings.
The Upstate district is still looking for 47 drivers but shortages are nothing new. James said it has been that way all seven years he has worked for the district. Shortages were at the worst during the coronavirus pandemic and have slowly improved.
Greenville County starts its drivers at $21 per hour, with a $450 retention bonus after 45 days and an extra $1,800 paid out in the summer for drivers with perfect attendance and driving records.
Horry County pays a starting wage of $17.72 per hour, with a $1,500 bonus each semester for all drivers who work the full semester.
“I think everybody is trying to do the best they can,” Bourcier said.
Jessica Holdman writes about the economy, workforce and higher education. Before joining the S.C. Daily Gazette, she was a business reporter for The Post and Courier.
