The most recent meeting of the board of the South East Cornerstone Public School Division saw the bi-annual transportation report delivered by the Manager of Facilities & Transportation, Andy Dobson. He detailed that 4,642 students, up 110 from last school year, are taken to and from school on 157 bus routes. The buses themselves travel a combined 25,638 kilometres a day to accomplish the feat.
Despite all the movement, though, there are still some issues with getting the students to school in two spots – Carlyle and Arcola – where there are open routes. This means the route is there, but there isn’t a driver for the bus.
“It’s never a good thing to have open routes,” explained Dobson. When there is an open route for more than two consecutive days, the school division will then start reimbursing the parents for the mileage for driving their children to school. This, however, can result in high costs for the division.
“We’re certainly looking for bus drivers,” Dobson continued. “Whether it’s an urban route, or being spared for rural routes, we’re just trying to attract as many bus drivers as we possibly can.”
The recruitment process hasn’t been the hard part for the school division. Since the end of last summer, SECPSD has hired 19 new bus drivers. Retaining some of the drivers does become the difficult part. Dobson noted most of the losses are internal transfers within the division.
“They may want to transfer over to an EA (educational assistant), or a caretaker or something like that.”
There is also the issue of not having the drivers in the locations they are needed – for example, extra drivers in the western part of the division, but a need for drivers in the eastern part.
The recruitment strategy that has been most successful as of late has been what Dobson called ‘shoulder-tapping’. This is where a current driver recommends somebody they know, who they think would be a good bus driver. This has a financial incentive too, with the referring driver receiving $500.
“Usually, the ones that are shoulder tapped, those are the ones that become our long-term bus drivers,” Dobson said. “They like the job and all the challenges that come with it.”
Those who want to become bus drivers receive everything they need. The school division provides all the training and makes sure the drivers are successful in getting their school bus endorsement through SGI.
Those who are interested in becoming a bus driver can contact the school division at (306) 848-0080 or on the SECPSD website.