Lake Travis school district cuts bus routes amid driver shortage

The Lake Travis school district last week announced it is cutting many of its bus routes amid a driver shortage.

The district will no longer provide bus service to students who live within two miles of their campus, and those who live outside two miles can take the bus only every other week. Classes begin Tuesday.

Brad Bailey, the assistant superintendent of operations, said the district has less than half the bus drivers as it did before the pandemic. He cited the high cost of living in the Lake Travis area as one of the reasons for the district's struggle to find employees, including bus drivers.

Over the summer, he said, the district increased the base pay for drivers from $20 to $22. The pay can go up to $33 depending on how much experience the drivers have.

For bus drivers, Bailey said. the high price of housing in the area means some people would have to commute an hour or more to work multiple times a day when instead they could work at their local school district and make a little less money but spend less on transportation to work.

Bailey said the district will readjust the bus schedule if it can hire more drivers. He said he is working with the district's director of transportation to mitigate the driver shortage by hosting job fairs and getting certified people in the district to drive buses.

“We started going through plans to see how we can make up the difference in our driver shortage,” Bailey said. “We were having our office staff drive. We were having our mechanics drive. Anybody we could find that has (a commercial driver's license) was driving a bus and then we kept on losing drivers.”

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Bailey said that despite their efforts, district officials couldn’t find enough drivers to keep a more consistent bus schedule. Before the pandemic, the district had around 85 drivers, he said, but now has fewer than half that.

Pollyanna Reschke, a Lake Travis parent, said the $2 an hour base pay raise is not enough and that $33 should be the starting pay. Reschke said she also worries that fewer buses will mean an increase in traffic during pickup, a time of day she described as a “living nightmare" when she first dealt with alternating bus schedules last year.

“This is a fair solution for now, however this cannot be the long-term solution to this problem and needs to be acted on quickly,” Reschke said. “My thought is that the district acted too little, too late.”

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Jennifer Montgomery, a resident of Lakeway and the Lake Travis area for almost 15 years, has two children in the district. She said she was shocked when she heard the news about the reduction in the bus service.

Montgomery said many school districts are dealing with staffing shortages, but Lake Travis especially struggles because of the area's high cost of living. She said hourly workers can find jobs closer to home and with affordable housing proposals being voted down by the Lakeway City Council, there’s no way for those workers to afford the area.

“LTISD leadership has to be even more proactive and creative in addressing these concerns,” Montgomery said. “So far, I have not seen that kind of leadership. In fact, yesterday we were notified that there are not enough cafeteria workers, so hot lunches will not be served in many of the schools. LTISD appears to be on the verge of a staffing collapse and it's clear the state government is not going to save us. We need our district leadership to step up.”

Because she and her husband both work, Montgomery had to enroll her child into extended care at the last minute, whichcosts her $172 a month plus a $45 registration fee. This after-school program starts at $150 a month but goes up to $192, depending on how long the child needs to stay.

“I really feel for the families who are not as fortunate as our family in terms of finances and flexible schedules,” Montgomery said. “This is a huge burden to put on them one week before school starts. Many of these children may miss school on days their bus route does not run because they have no way to get to school.”

Montgomery also worries for students’ safety if they have to walk to school. The district is built along two major highways, Texas 71 and RM 620, so she said students have to walk or bike along streets without sidewalks.

Parent Kristi Benoit Stauffer, who works from home, said she would still be working most days when she saw the yellow blur of the school bus passing by her window. Now, with the change in her middle school and high school daughters’ bus schedules, there is no bus every other week and she said she can’t work as long because she has to pick up her kids during work hours.

Even as she changes her schedule, Stauffer said she has it easier than many. She sees others in her community with less flexible jobs scrambling to find solutions and make carpool spreadsheets. She said her husband, however, who works in construction, needs to be on a building site for work and will struggle more than office workers to accommodate the reduced bus schedule.

“It's hard for us but it's equally as hard for the (district's) Transportation Department,” Stauffer said. “I feel bad for them. I feel bad for our kids. It's not supposed to be like this. School was supposed to be fun and not so complicated with all of this and we had to deal with COVID for a couple of years, and now we're having to deal with this labor shortage and it's unfortunate.”

Stauffer said she can see the district making efforts to get people to apply and doesn’t think the shortage its fault. She attributes the lack of drivers to the location. She suspects people don’t want to make the commute, especially during a time when gas prices have recently risen.

“Some of those parents are angry and I don't really know who they're angry at,” Stauffer said. “I don't know who could make this better. I don't know what the school district could have done differently. You can't force someone to apply for jobs and where we live is a pretty expensive area.”

Bailey said there’s a misconception that the school district has to require buses, but it only has to providetransportation for special education students.

“We provide transportation because we believe it's necessary for our community and our families and our students, because of the service that they need to help get our students to school,” Bailey said. “We just hope that people give us a little patience on this and understanding, and we're gonna work through this together. And hopefully, sooner than later, we can have some resolution to some of our transportation issues.”

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Lake Travis school district cuts bus routes amid driver shortage