Conway offering new incentives to attract bus drivers

CONWAY — The Conway School Board voted unanimously at its last meeting to pay the upfront costs for anyone seeking to become a school bus driver in Conway.

“The bus driver shortage is a nationwide issue, and it’s no different here in Conway,” Jim Hill, SAU 9 director of administrative services, said at the Dec. 12 meeting.

Hill said: “To attract new bus drivers, I’d like the board to endorse paying candidates for their time while they train (an estimated 30 hours at $22 per hour, equaling $660). as well as the $333 in upfront costs ($100 for a criminal background check, $48 for fingerprinting, $125 for a pre-employment physical and $60 for a commercial driver’s license) required to become a certified driver ($993).”

Hill added: “Hopefully, this might incentivize people who wouldn’t take the time to become a driver or have the money to advance the costs to participate in the bus driver training and become certified bus drivers.”

Superintendent Kevin Richard supported Hill’s recommendation. “We’ve had vacancies in our district,” he said. “We aren’t getting anybody knocking at those doors. I think the reality is that these are tough, tough things that we have to take a look at.”

Hill said the average age of Conway’s eight regular route drivers is 60. The youngest is 51 and the oldest 67.

“The average age of our substitute drivers is north of that,” he said. “The reality is, bus drivers are hard to find.”

The district has tried to be competitive in its search for drivers but to no avail. “Two years ago, this board approved the staff’s recommendation to offer a $5,000 sign-on bonus for any new hires,” said Hill. “This included full-time drivers as well as drivers who would be willing to take extra trips. The bonus has only been paid to two new drivers during that time.”

He added: “We recently published a full-sized display advertisement looking for school bus drivers. The ad noted the $22 per hour starting wage and included the $5,000 sign-on bonus incentive. Only two people expressed an interest, and one was under the age of 74.”

“My only concern is what if they go through all this and we pay for everything in pre-employment and then they don’t come on board,” board member Randy Davison said.

“That’s a legitimate concern,” said Hill but added: “We’re not getting people coming in the front door applying for the position even with the $22 per hour, even with the $5,000 incentive. We’ve been trying to incrementally get people to come in. We’ve got a couple of good ones, but it’s not going to be enough to fill the void of these folks (when they begin retiring).

“You’re talking about a $1,000 investment potentially out of a $40 million budget. Yes, you may lose somebody. You may lose a bus driver that you have today to another transportation (company), but I think if we don’t do this, we’re going be in a big problem in a couple of years.”

Board member Joe Mosca agreed with Davison. “That was my question,” he said, “but can we put something in that is we pay for everything and they decide not to go work for us, to go to work for somebody else that they have to reimburse us?”

“You can,” Hill said but offered a couple of possible scenarios. “If we had somebody that came in and did like five or eight hours, and said, you know what, this isn’t for me, but at least they gave it, they gave it a shot. But if somebody is on the fence that says, ‘You know what, I’m going to have to pay back and I don’t have $300, $400 or $500 to pay back, if I decide this isn’t me, I’m not going to sign up.’

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“I want to take down all the barriers that I can and say, please come through the door. I’m not going to hold you to this job for six months or a year. And the other part is, we’re probably going to spend, again, it’s about $1,000. We’re going to probably spend $3,000, trying to track down $1,000 to get back from somebody. It’s like trying to get blood from a turnip.”

“I’m not asking that somebody decides this is not for them,” Mosca replied. “I’m saying that we train somebody, and then they decide to go work somewhere else, I think we should get reimbursed for that.”

Mosca continued: “I think there should be something in there that if we spend our money, and they get trained, they get the CDL license and then they say, ‘You know what, this town over here is going to pay me $50 an hour, I’m gonna work for them instead of for you for $22 per hour. We should be able to get our money back.”

Hill disagreed. “I think that that is going to potentially discourage somebody from coming in,” he said. “If they come in and work, driving a bus for three months, and say, ‘You know what, I’m gonna go work for Coleman’s because the rocks don’t talk back.’ I don’t think we want to do that,” Hill said.

“I think we want to take down all the barriers that we can to try to get as many people as we can through the door. We’re not talking tens of thousands of dollars. We might be talking about $5,000 a year,” Hill said.

Michelle Capozzoli, the school board chair, supported Hill’s recommendation.

“This is all a risk. And this is the discussion that we had at the personnel committee,” she said.

“But the reality is, is that we’re not getting bus drivers. If we have to go to a company, you know, they could be nice to us for a year, but then there’s only one company so it’s a monopoly and could potentially cost us a lot more than a few thousand dollars,” she said.

SAU 9 has 15 regular drivers and a handful of part-time drivers covering the seven schools from Conway to Bartlett and Jackson, according to Gredel Shaw, the transportation coordinator for SAU 9.

“I’m very, very lucky to have as many as I do,” she said. “I have a great group; we just could use a few more in the group. We’re not alone in having a need; we’re luckier than a lot of places.”

“Last year,” Hill said, “we had two bus drivers in SAU 9 retire. Eaton’s vacant position was filled by a Conway substitute driver and we were fortunate to find a new hire for Bartlett. The bottom line is we’re seeing more drivers retire or preparing to retire and we’re not seeing any new interest from potential candidates, even with a decent wage and sign-on bonus.”

According to Hill, last year, Conway’s buses traveled 122,000 miles on regular routes and 38,000 miles for field trips and co-curricular activities.

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