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Kansas school bus shortage2/21/2024 As a district, we know that change is hard. Over the past several months, we have undergone many difficult conversations to solve our current issues with transportation services and access to educational opportunities for all students.We have heard your feedback and appreciate all who have taken the time to voice their input and participate in the process through surveys, the bell schedule committee, or feedback sent through our website and email. Limitations on field trip requests per day.įor more information and additional details, please read this article.Establish minimum route ridership for elementary payride routes.Eliminate safety variances where improvements to walking/biking accessibility have been completed or where a walkable path to school, including one or more of the following, is available: crosswalks, stop signs, traffic lights and/or a city pedestrian crossing.Transition to payride service for 21st Century Programs/OATC/Mill Creek Campus.Eliminate payride transportation services for middle and high school students.The changes to transportation services for the 2023-24 school year include: While the interventions below will provide temporary solutions for the 2023-24 school year, the district will continue to work on long-term solutions, such as a three-tier bus schedule, starting early next fall. "That's $2,000 income, which is a significant amount of money for a part-time job that pays in the range that we do.At the May 4 Board of Education meeting, district administration provided an update on the transportation interventions that will be implemented for the 2023-24 school year. "I believe it was $1,000 at the end of Semester 1, if you finish the semester, and then if you start and finish Semester 2, another $1,000," said Critch, whose association will meet with the education minister later this month. "We’ll lose drivers to Amazon - that's a big one - and transit is another big one, so they’ll get their training and licence and then go work for someone else," said Doroshenko, adding that transit drivers start at a wage of $36 per hour while her company pays $23-25 per hour.Ĭritch agrees wages are a problem and that a bonus program that seems to be working in Ontario should be tried in Alberta. and it’s also not just in the area of bus drivers."ĭoroshenko says wages being offered to school bus drivers also pose issues as better-paying jobs can siphon them away. I know that these are challenges that other provinces are facing. "Those challenges aren’t just isolated to Alberta. "We do still continue to have some challenges in recruitment," Demetrios Nicolaides told CTV News Edmonton on Tuesday. The province's education minister says despite streamlining the system and adding funding, it hasn't worked as well as hoped. "This did not get out to the school districts until July - I think it was July 20 - and that was not enough time for school districts or bus operators to advertise to get more people in the door." "We never thought that that was going to make a big impact," said Mark Critch, president of the Alberta School Bus Contractors' Association, adding that even a $1,200 incentive the government added for drivers to finish training didn't get advertised soon enough to attract more applicants. With the onus and cost still on bus companies to train drivers, the industry's provincial spokesperson says he isn't surprised it didn't work. "A lot of people give up mid-way, they find other jobs. "From start to finish, it can take five to six weeks to get through the training program," said Doroshenko. The Alberta government dropped mandatory entry-level training, or MELT, for school bus drivers, and while that has helped, says Cunningham Transportation's Laura Doroshenko, the move didn't shorten the intensive training process. As school starts for most students in Edmonton and across Alberta, bus companies say they still suffer from a shortage of drivers even though the province has provided incentives.
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