Late buses, no air-conditioning: Nationwide bus, labor shortages affect local students

“Last Thursday, the bus didn’t arrive at 3:15 p.m. like it usually does. It arrived at 4 p.m. This Thursday, the same thing happened. The bus arrived at 4. The school didn’t give any notice.”

“It’s always the same problem. The air conditioning doesn’t work. There’s only two to three buses for this route each year, and when they break down, there are no more.”

“It’s very frustrating to pick up and drop off my daughter on a bus that has no air conditioning.”

“It’s very difficult to see your daughter bathed in sweat, saying, ‘Mamá, my head hurts.’”

“I don’t want this to happen to other kids.”

“This problem is worse than anyone can imagine.”

“Please help us.”

On a hot, sticky night in late August, more than a dozen parents from the communities of North Shore and Mecca made the drive to the Coachella Valley Unified School District headquarters in Thermal to plead with the board of education to address a dire transportation quandary:

Buses lack air conditioning. They are arriving and departing late, making kids tardy for school in the morning and forcing them to wait longer at unshaded bus stops under the blazing sun in the afternoon. There is also a shortage of drivers to consistently complete all the routes in a timely manner.

These issues aren’t new ones, but they’re worse than normal. Parents, bus drivers and trustees who spoke at the board meeting acknowledged the district has struggled with transportation for years.

Recent problems flared up at the end of last school year when kids waited more than an hour at unshaded stops for their buses to arrive.

Since school resumed in-person after the COVID-19 pandemic, transportation woes have worsened not just for Coachella Valley Unified but for school districts across the nation.

Snarls in global supply chains and nationwide labor shortages have made it extremely difficult for many school districts to get enough buses and drivers.

In July, 86% of respondents to a nationally representative survey of school and district administrators conducted by the EdWeek Research Center said they don't have enough candidates to fill open bus driver positions.

News outlets from Hawaii to North Carolina reported just in the last week of August that local school districts have canceled or combined bus routes to adjust to an ongoing driver shortage.

Here in the Coachella Valley, all districts are affected.

Desert Sands Unified has 66 drivers, and it would like to hire five more, according to transportation manager Charles Lavrusky.

Palm Springs Unified cut several bus routes last year.

Currently, a notice to parents on the district's website says some routes have been combined due to the driver shortage.

"Our goal is to still pick up every student at their assigned stop, however, buses may run late," it reads.

Palm Springs Unified has 72 drivers contracted through First Student, a private company that helps manage transportation services. It would like to have 87 drivers to cover its 79 total routes, Abdelhak Bouzroud, coordinator of transportation services told The Desert Sun.  As a stopgap, it’s working with 11 drivers from other First Student locations.

“There are several challenges for recruiting new drivers,” Bouzroud said. “First, there is a fierce competition from other big employers in the area, with some offering full-time positions, while ours are part-time. Also, it takes a school bus driver between six to eight weeks to be fully licensed.

"In addition, some newly hired drivers tend to resign after becoming fully licensed to work with other school districts which own their fleet, or simply decide that it’s not the right job for them. Furthermore, it is not always easy to get California Highway Patrol written- and behind-the-wheel appointments as we only have one CHP officer in charge of all school buses in our area. As a result, this could delay the training process up to 4 weeks.”

Other factors that could make recruiting bus drivers more difficult for local districts are inflation and the skyrocketing cost of rent. Rents in a majority of Coachella Valley cities have grown between roughly 45% and 55% over the last three years, according to Zillow data provided to The Desert Sun earlier this summer.

More: Palm Springs Unified looking to hire bus drivers before school starts Aug. 10

More: ‘There’s no place to go’: Coachella Valley rents skyrocket, squeezing working class

The minimum hourly wage for a bus driver in Palm Springs Unified is $21.53. A driver with six or more years of seniority makes $25.50 per hour.

In Desert Sands, bus drivers make $27.76 per hour on average, Lavrusky said.

Neither of these districts experience transportation issues quite like Coachella Valley Unified.

“We are one of the very few districts that transports elementary, middle, high school and special education students,” said district spokesperson Lissette Santiago. “Other districts only transport one or the other or a small combination of these, but not all. We also have to consider that rural districts like ours have longer drive times compared to many other districts. Lastly, our district currently covers two counties, two cities and many unincorporated communities of Riverside County.”

In terms of enrollment, CVUSD is the valley’s smallest district. In terms of geography, it’s the largest.

It covers 1,250 square miles, most of which is rural farmland and desert in southeast Riverside County and a sliver of Imperial County, and also the communities of Coachella, Thermal, Oasis, Mecca, North Shore, Desert Center and Salton City.

It has 70 total bus routes and 76 drivers.

Santiago said drivers for CVUSD earn health benefits and an average monthly salary of $4,312, but they are only paid 10 months out of the year.

Drivers are compensated for eight hours of work per workday, but they are asked to work split shifts — mornings for pick-ups and afternoons for drop-offs. They’re not paid for the hours between pick-ups during the school day, which is practically too small a window to take a second job, and it’s a tight time frame to get home or back to the district transportation facility and rest much before starting their afternoon route.

Despite recruitment and training efforts all summer, the district is short 18 drivers, Santiago said.

“One of the challenges is that the driving test is only offered in English,” Santiago said. “We have a high interest from applicants in our community whose primary language is not English. It’s a workforce we have available but cannot tap into.”

Another sensitive issue in the community, especially this blistering hot and humid August, is the lack of air conditioning on many buses.

Whereas all buses are air-conditioned for both Palm Springs and Desert Sands Unified, only 63 of CVUSD’s 108 buses have air conditioning, district staff said at the late-August meeting.

Eight buses are due to be retrofitted with air conditioning systems, purchase orders for the repairs already approved, but staff said they’re waiting for parts to arrive.

Patricia Leal-Gutierrez, a North Shore resident and community activist, urged the seven-member board to prioritize purchasing air-conditioned buses.

“I appreciate the ongoing efforts, and we must do more to purchase them urgently,” she said.

The district already approved a purchase order earlier this year for about two dozen air-conditioned buses. It’s still waiting for them to arrive.

“They are being manufactured as we speak,” Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Mayela Salcedo said at the board meeting.

More: CVUSD to hire new assistant superintendent of business services as questions swirl about predecessor

More: Coachella Valley Unified upgrading school bus fleet, but its driver shortage continues

Seven are scheduled to arrive in November. A second set should be received in December, Salcedo said.

“Once we receive those buses, all routes should have an air-conditioned bus on them,” Salcedo said.

By then, the summer’s triple-digit temperatures will likely have subsided, making way for the desert’s balmy winter.

Blistering August heat

To the chagrin of many parents, school resumed on Aug. 10.

The high temperature in Mecca that day was 108 degrees. It’s been over 100 degrees every day since. 

In fact, this August in the desert was hotter and muggier than usual, with temperatures 2½ degrees above normal accompanied by moisture from coastal monsoons.

Parents questioned why the board of education would approve such an early start to the school year given the scorching temperatures and the threat they say the heat poses to students while outdoors during recess and when buses — and even some classrooms, they allege — lack functioning air-conditioning. Santiago did not confirm or deny that some classes are without air conditioning when asked multiple times by The Desert Sun, saying each time that she would have to check with the facilities department but then failing to follow-up.

CVUSD is not unique for starting school in early August. All three districts in the Coachella Valley resumed classes by Aug. 16.

Whereas the school year traditionally started after Labor Day weekend, many school districts across California have pushed start dates into early August to finish the first semester before winter break and give students more time to prepare for state standardized tests and Advanced Placement exams in the spring.

One tradeoff in the desert is the extreme heat in August.

“Climate change is directly affecting the Coachella Valley,” Conchita Pozar, a concerned parent, told the board, asking them to consider starting future school years in September.

“In September, if the air conditioning on a school bus doesn’t work, the kids won’t suffer as much,” Pozar said. “If the air conditioning breaks down in a classroom, they won’t suffer as much. If the kids go outside for recess, they won’t suffer this (heat).”

“I don’t know why you have decided to start the school year on Aug. 10, knowing that this month has the hottest and most humid temperatures, and when classes finish kids get on a bus with no air conditioning,” Pozar said.

Other parents echoed her concerns. In emotional comments to the board, some described scenes of their children getting off the buses soaked in sweat, and alleged that their kids have been falling asleep on the bus from heat-and-humidity-induced exhaustion. Some said their children have begged them not to send them to school on the bus.

“It’s 105 degrees or more. Imagine being inside a school bus filled with kids seated three to a seat in this weather,” said Maria Avalos of North Shore, whose 7-year-old daughter takes the school bus.

“I don’t think it’s just, much less for kids that are 5 years old and in kindergarten, to be suffering from this heat that none of us can tolerate,” said Candelaria, another parent.

Trustee Jesus Gonzalez said the board knew these problems would occur when it approved the early school year start date.

“It makes me very sad and I’m ashamed because these are genuine concerns,” Gonzalez said. “The moment we decided to start the school year this early, we knew that we were going to have problems because questions about the heat and transportation have occurred in previous years and have been talked about at length here at the dais.”

“We have to do better now, and that’s our intention,” Gonzalez added.

Earlier this summer, Gonzalez drew the ire of school bus drivers for alleging their union was encouraging absenteeism and a lack of professionalism. About a dozen drivers demanded an apology from him at a June board meeting, and a California School Employees Association representative accused him of union-busting and of making "scurrilous, defamatory comments" about the districts' drivers.

"If I offended anybody, I apologize for that," he later said.

More: California School Employees Association accuses Jesus Gonzalez of union-busting

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At the late-August meeting, Trustee Silvia Paz voiced her frustration at the dais directly to Superintendent Luis Valentino.

“Dr. Valentino, we have discussed this issue before,” Paz said. “Three board meetings ago before the school year ended, I asked for a report about the state of transportation. The only thing I was told is that we have a plan, we are going to replace buses and that’s a very broad response.”

“As a matter of fact, I’ve expressed my frustration to you in English before," she added. "Now, I’m expressing it in Spanish so the impact is felt more. We should not be in this position. This should not have gotten to this point.”

Valentino did not comment at the meeting, but members of the transportation department addressed the room and encouraged parents to call them with questions and concerns.

Drivers spoke up, too.

"I've been with this district for 21 years," said bus driver Frankie Morales. "It's not the first time we've come here. It's not going to be the last time. I understand the concerns of our parents. I'm a parent as well. Not only do the kids suffer, we suffer as well."

"As always, I want to start off by thanking all the parents that showed up today and expressed their concerns, because their concerns are exactly our concerns," said bus driver Daniel Gonzalez. "We agree all buses should have AC. These extreme weather conditions are affecting all of us, including the drivers."

Editor's Note: A majority of the quotes in this article were delivered in Spanish by parents and trustees at a public meeting. The Desert Sun has translated them to English.

Jonathan Horwitz covers education for The Desert Sun. Reach him at jonathan.horwitz@desertsun.com or @Writes_Jonathan.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Bus and labor shortages, extreme heat affect Coachella Valley Unified students