School Board wonders how to keep bus drivers driving

Trained by Lee County. Hired by Rinker.

That’s the slogan Lee County School Board member Steven Teuber used Tuesday to sum up the district’s bus driver woes.

With commercial drivers able to make significantly more money driving for private companies than they can transporting students, Lee County School Board officials are bemoaning how many workers they’re losing only months after they’ve trained them to operate school buses.

Teuber on Tuesday refused to vote for an incentive that would pay the hiring and training costs for new school bus drivers, saying it made no sense to train the workers if they were only going to use the district as a springboard to a different career. The district has made the offer in the past, but Teuber said he’s seen no evidence it helped retain employees.

Superintendent James Browder said the district had hoped to use the promise of paying the $155 to lure the 40 new drivers it needs before the school year starts in August. Teuber’s no vote to the policy change meant the item failed because just three other school board members were present at the meeting and four yes votes were needed. School board member Jane Kuckel was absent.

Browder said before the vote that holding off on the incentive could affect the district’s ability to transport students next school year.

The step would have cost the district about $10,000 a year.

Browder said he will compile data supporting the incentive and present it again to the board at an upcoming meeting.

Keeping drivers for the more than 700 buses the district operates daily is a tough task, Browder said.

Training sessions are taking place once every other week, up from once a month a year ago, he said. But some drivers go through the necessary steps, work 60 days, then find a job driving a truck at three to four times more than what they can make at the district, Browder said.

The problem has worsened in recent years because of the area’s low unemployment, he said, and is affecting public transportation in Collier and Charlotte counties as well.

“We’re competing with everyone else,” he said. “This isn’t just Lee County anymore ... We’ve never had to recruit like this before.”

Offering to pay the training cost is a small way to entice local residents to drive buses, he said.

“What you have to hope is that a certain percentage of folks who go through the training really do want to work for us,” he said.

Teuber, however, worried some are exploiting the district, saying the county was training drivers who are hired away by companies like Rinker Materials. Instead of easing the training costs, the district should develop a program that entices people to stay, he said.

School board member Jeanne Dozier agreed.

“I worry about those drivers already hired,” she said. “We need to be thinking out of the box, if you will, on some things we can do to retain those individuals who are here.”