Fayette County School officials say bus driver shortage is worse due to pandemic

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WTVQ) – Families who rely on the buses to get their child to school had to make other plans Thursday.

As four routes were cancelled due to a shortage of drivers…a shortage the Fayette County School District continues to face.

“At least in my tenure here as far back as 2018, we’ve been dealing with this pretty extensively. Unfortunately COVID has exacerbated it, just like with everything else, restaurants, airlines, hotels, you know, you name it, everyone’s up against a staffing crunch…so we’re just feeling the bite of that” said Chief Operating Officer, Myron Thompson.

The pandemic having a significant impact as Thompson says the job is typically for people who are older and retired.

“It has had an impact on our transportation department in particular and yes our staffing for this position tends to be older, it’s a retirement gig for a lot of individuals, so we have to be very cognizant of that as well.”

There are currently 25 openings for bus drivers…with 31 people with CDL licenses filling-in.
Those people usually do other jobs around the bus depot.
Even with those people filling in, it leaves just six others as potential substitutes.
So with 8 drivers calling in sick, there weren’t enough people to drive all the routes on Thursday.

He says it could happen again.

“I suggest families be on stand-by because even if we were at full staffing levels we never know how this virus is going to respond so that can impact us operationally as well” said Thompson.

Thompson says there’s also a bus monitor shortage, with 233 bus drivers and 191 monitors.

A bus monitor is responsible for making sure kids get on and off the buses safely, and supervise while on the bus.

On Wednesday…a child was left on a Fayette County school bus…Thompson says the district is investigating the incident and emphasized the need for more bus monitors.

“There’s just a lot of things that are out of our control that were trying to respond to, but we know our kids are very resilient, our parents are very patient and our employees are dedicated so we will get through this.”