When this school year started there was a large shortage of bus drivers due to many being unvaccinated and the fear of being exposed to covid in the small environment of the school bus. This shortage of staff has led to many unforeseen events that have and will continue to affect our school year and the way bus drivers are treated.
At the start of the school year there was a staff shortage of around 100 employees, even with a $1,200 bonus being given to new drivers. This shortage led to a mix of new routes added to their old ones. As explained by WRAL anchor and reporter Adam Owens, “The shortage has resulted in more than half of the district's 627 bus routes becoming ‘shared runs,’ in which one driver handles multiple routes.” With these new routes on the drivers, it didn't help when they received no raise or bonus for their extra labor.
The stress being put onto these workers built even more when parents and kids started making comments to them. In an interview with WRAL, Jane, a bus driver affected by this issue who to protect her job didn't want to be identified by her full name, said, “When we pull up to the bus stop, you get the looks and you get the smart comments from the parents and the kids." She went on to say, "We get a lot of the attitude because they do not realize we are short bus drivers and we are doing three or four more routes than we ever have.” This treatment toward the bus drivers started on the third day of school, not even a week into the new school year.
The stress on bus drivers continued into September. On Friday, September 10th, bus drivers and the NCAE (North Carolina Association of Educators) met outside the N.C. General Assembly to demand a guaranteed minimum wage of $15 an hour. In another interview with WRAL, Kristin Beller, president of Wake NCAE, said, "Students are not consistently getting to school on time. State lawmakers must pass a state budget that fully funds our public schools and pays our bus drivers a living wage.” Beller continued, “Clearly, our school bus driver jobs do not pay enough to recruit the number of drivers North Carolina needs to consistently get our children to school on time. Our state lawmakers have been slow to respond. They must fix this now.”
On October 29th the first major “sick-out” occurred. The sick-out days were days that multiple bus drivers would take as a sick day. According to WRAL, “Dozens of school bus drivers in Wake County participated in a mass sick-out to protest working conditions and better pay. A district spokeswoman said a third of the county's 600 buses did not operate Friday morning. Some Wake County school bus drivers participated in a ‘sick-out’ for a second day on Monday, leaving 160 buses without drivers – and stressed out parents leaving work early to wait in line for their children.'' This initially took place in Wake County but eventually spread to other counties as well.
With these strikes negatively affecting the kids in our school systems, the school board took action on November 2nd. The Wake County School Board attempted to ease the bus drivers’ frustrations by introducing a $1,250 bonus and a 2.25% pay increase. Many other counties were bumping up their pay, too.
Seeing the effects of the bus strikes, cafeteria workers have begun fighting for higher pay as well. On November 16th, cafeteria workers held their own “sick-out” that left 30 schools in Wake County without food prepared.
In response to this, on November 16th a school board meeting was held that established multiple bonuses for school employees. According to the News and Observer, the school board plans to use “$80.7 million in federal COVID relief dollars to provide $3,750 in employee bonuses that will be given in three installments in January, May and November of 2022. Including the $1,250 bonus approved this month, full-time employees will get a total of $5,000 in bonuses by this time next year. If there’s enough funding, David Neter, Wake’s chief business officer, said it’s the district’s desire to provide an additional $1,250 employee bonus in early 2023.”
The importance of these workers has been neglected. As these strikes reach their end, not only should pay increase, but the way we see our school employees should also change. Over the last few weeks I feel like I, along with many others, have had a revelation. Before, some people wouldn't look twice at a bus driver or a cafeteria worker. It wasn't until they were gone that we truly noticed their importance. If there is anything that has changed over these last few weeks, it shouldn't just be a change in these workers' pay. We should also change the way we think of them. We should appreciate and thank these workers more often, because without them you may not even get to school and or have lunch to eat.