It’s new territory for mom Ashley Martinez.
“They could wait an hour sometimes,” Martinez said.
She said that can be the wait time for a school bus in Fort Bend County Independent School District.
“They need more people,” she added.
FBISD’s Director of Transportation Mike Jones said that altogether, they run 330 routes.
“When we are this short, our drivers have to double up,” he said.
This means a driver will drop off a group and have to rerun that same route to pick up another group of students.
“We don’t want kids standing on the side of the road,” Jones said. “So, we are working as hard as we can to get those positions filled.”
Jones said right now, they have 40 people in training but he says it’s a 30 to 90-day process from start to finish, adding that a few years ago the federal government added another layer of training.
“It increased the amount of time it takes for us to get a driver ready to go behind the wheel,” he said.
From mechanics to supervisors— he said right now, it’s all hands on deck for employees with a commercial driver’s license.
“We are going to run a route,” he said. “It may be late but we are going to run it.”
Jones said drivers are trained not to run overcrowded busses, instead, they will rerun a route or request assistance. He added they do offer paid training and are continuing to hire.