As Wake bus driver protest continues, parents have to pick up their kids from school
Carpool lanes were jammed at some Wake County schools on Monday afternoon due to an ongoing bus driver walkout over working conditions.
Schools warned parents Monday that some bus routes didn’t have drivers to take their children home after multiple bus routes didn’t run in the morning. The district had warned families on Sunday that “bus driver absences could disrupt transportation services on Monday,” so parents “should arrange their own transportation for their students if their bus route is affected.”
Families who use bus service were asked to visit the bus updates page to check the status of their child’s bus. Wake had warned that the affected areas on Monday would most likely be the routes that didn’t run on Friday when only 400 of the 600 buses ran.
The numbers improved Monday morning to 440 buses running, the district said. But the number of drivers out was still far higher than on a normal school day.
Parents faced a repeat of Friday’s long afternoon carpool lines. Schools asked parents to show patience as they picked up their children in the afternoon.
No school Tuesday
But Wake is saying “we do not expect the absences to continue beyond Monday.” Tuesday is a teacher workday across all schools due to Election Day, so no classes will be held.
What could improve things is that on Tuesday the school board plans to vote on giving a $1,250 bonus to all full-time employees, including bus drivers. The board will also vote Tuesday on raises for teachers and raising the minimum salary of support staff to $13 an hour.
The board will also discuss paying bus drivers for the extra routes they’re picking up. Due to a shortage of drivers, many are now driving double the amount of routes this year but for no additional pay.
Wake NCAE, which has declined to say what role, if any, it played in the driver walkout, plans to hold a rally outside Tuesday’s school board meeting. The group is asking for a $2,000 minimum hazard pay bonus, extra compensation for extra duties and pay raises for all staff.
“With vacancies through the roof and educators taking on more and more work during the COVID-19 pandemic, WCPSS employees are quickly reaching a breaking point,” Wake NCAE said in its call for the rally. “Every day, our colleagues who love their jobs leave the school system because they just can’t make ends meet or sustain the stress of uncompensated extra duties. Neither our students nor our staff can afford for us to lose even one more educator.”
Driver shortages common
The state funds the base salaries of school employees, such as paying bus drivers $12.75 an hour. Wake supplements it to a minimum of $15 an hour. Wake also offered this year a $1,200 bonus to recruit new drivers.
But the number of vacant positions has continued to rise.
Wake, like school districts across the nation, is facing a shortage of school bus drivers. Wake’s bus driver vacancy rate was 17% in September.
The shortage is causing the remaining drivers to do more work than ever before. It’s why Wake Superintendent Cathy Moore and school board Chairman Keith Sutton say the drivers’ actions should be viewed with sympathy.
“The pay and salary structure for the work we do is not adequate,” Moore and Sutton wrote in an email sent Friday to school employees. “Today our bus drivers shone a harsh light on this reality.”
Who’s to blame for situation?
Fingers are being pointed over who is to blame for the bus driver shortage.
Some angry parents blamed the school system for the bus problems.
“Wcpss is disgusting,” Christine Wilkerson, a Wake parent, tweeted Sunday after the district warned about the bus delays. “I wish I had other options. They don’t care about their teachers, students, parents, and bus drivers. They need to face lawsuits.”
But the Public School Forum of North Carolina says that state lawmakers are falling short on providing enough money to adequately pay bus drivers and other school employees.
“This bus driver sickout is highly unlikely to be the last one we will see,” Mary Ann Wolf, president of the Public School Forum, wrote in a column. “Nor will the message that comes home from your school about another teacher leaving the classroom, or your child sharing how the principal or another teacher had to sub for their class today. We did not get to this point because of the pandemic.”
Wolf and other public-education advocacy groups are calling on state lawmakers to fully fund the Leandro action plan, which calls for $1.7 billion in new education funding over the next two years.
State Superior Court Judge David Lee could issue a court order next week ordering lawmakers to fully fund the plan. Republican legislative leaders say they won’t fund the plan and argue Lee has no authority to order them to provide the money.
This story was originally published October 31, 2021 at 7:49 PM with the headline "As Wake bus driver protest continues, parents have to pick up their kids from school."
