LAKELAND – School divisions across the Lakeland are doing what they can to continue to bring students to classes on yellow school buses – even though driver and contractor shortages continue to worsen.
“There is two parts of that whole equation, one is acquiring the hardware and the other is actual the driver,” summarized Matt Richter, the Northern Lights Public Schools’ (NLPS) director of transportation.
Describing how dire the situation has become throughout various communities in North America, Richter pointed to Massachusetts, USA, where the Governor called in the National Guards to transport students to school due to an unprecedented lack of school bus drivers.
The Lakeland region has not been an exception to this worsening trend.
In a statement to Lakeland This Week, Tessa Hetu, the secretary-treasurer of Lakeland Catholic school Division (LCSD) wrote, “Like many school divisions across the province, Lakeland Catholic has been experiencing issues with bus driver availability since last year, and they have continued into this school year.”
The effects of reduced driver availabilities have caused students to arrive later to class, and some parents are choosing to drop off children instead of facing delays and transportation uncertainties.
Hetu continued, “We have some bus routes without drivers, so we are having to double up runs where possible, which results in some students arriving later for school, or parents having to make arrangements to get their children to (and) from school.”
As a result, both NLPS and the LCSD are facing a lack of, or in some instances, no substitute drivers being available to cover runs if a driver is unavailable due to illness or other circumstances, further worsening the driver crunch.
This also extends to contractors hired by the school divisions.
“A lot of the contractors don't have sub drivers at all. So, if they get sick or if they have to take a day off for a family event or medical reasons, there is no one to drive. In years gone by, there used to be,” Richter said.
To mitigate transportation disruptions, Hetu stated that “Lakeland Catholic is constantly communicating and working with our bus contractors to help where possible with recruitment of drivers, and to provide as much notice to parents as possible when runs are cancelled, delayed, or combined.”
Responding to the question if school bus operations could disappear in the region, the NLPS transportation director said, “We don't know, we hope this is a blip.”
During Wednesday’s NLPS board meeting, Board Chair Arlene Hrynyk, said she was nervous that there may be such an unexpected and significant impact from the driver shortages that there could come a point where yellow buses could disappear from Lakeland’s roads.
Hrynyk’s comments followed an overview of route disruptions and the adjustments being made to cope with the shortages.
Richter reported that in the Bonnyville region, four routes had been dissolved into other routes, and that the Moose Lake area, which would typically have three buses running, now has only one.
“There's just no other options left,” Richter told NLPS’s Board of Trustees.
Cold Lake’s Art Smith Aviation Academy has had four routes consolidated into three. Off the base, routes 82 and 83 have been similarly combined in Cold Lake.
In Lac La Biche, the school division has consolidated some runs in Kikino off and on, Richter said, adding “We've eliminated the in-town route (for Lac La Biche) totally, and the rural (students) we are packing in as many as we can and it's worked out well so far in Lac La Biche, but we are so thin and so full that we've just run out of options to do any more consolidations,” he explained.
Greater deterrents than incentives for driving school buses
According to Richter, there has been increased disincentives that have led to the reduction of individuals pursing work in the driving industry, especially within regards to operating school buses.
The main deterrents Richter lists include the pandemic and fear of contracting COVID-19, and the cost of insuring school bus drivers in the province, which has gone up between 300 to 400 per cent for some contractors. He also points to financial supports offered by the governments such as CERB, as well as the mandatory 53-hour entry level training course implemented by Alberta Transportation known as MELT.
With mounting deterrents faced by the industry, Richter said that he and other transportation directors across the province would like to see incentives created by Alberta Transportation.
"MELT is a wonderful thing,” expressed Richter. “I feel that the drivers today are the best trained drivers that have ever been put out on the roads, but what (Alberta Transportation) didn't do is address the disincentive of it. What they have to do is look at promoting it and endorsing it, and possibly subsidizing the training.”
Richter notes that the NLPS offers their own training program for individuals interested in the profession.
“We just need candidates to walk through the door to take on the occupation,” Richter said, adding “We've got everything set up to go, we just need people to show interest... Often we hear from drivers that they love it because it fits their life and they like working with kids and listening to them.”
