SPRINGDALE, Ark — A shortage of bus drivers is a nationwide problem, but Northwest Arkansas is getting hit hard leaving many kids without buses to get them to and from school.
“We’ve offered services in school districts across the nation that we were proud of and now it has become a crisis,” said Kevin Conkin.
The Springdale School District says they only have 63 bus drivers, which is even down from the start of the school year, and they need 115 drivers to make all 89 of their routes. Director of transportation, Kevin Conkin says the driver shortage isn’t a new problem, but it’s continued to escalate over the years.
“The pandemic has turned it into a crisis. I will say a crisis because our parents are the ones affected. If they have to work and they have to take those kids to school,” said Conkin.
Rita Littrell lives in Elm Springs and sees firsthand how bad this problem is because her neighbors go to work very early leaving their kids to catch the bus. She says when the bus doesn’t come like today the kids come to her to drive them to school.
“This has happened once every week school has been going but this week it happened two days in a row,” said Littrell.
Littrell wonders what is happening to kids who don’t have someone else who can drive them to school.
“I think it’s a real problem, we are worrying about kids in school, we worry about what they lost last year in learning from remote and quarantining but now the kids, probably the ones that are most vulnerable to success are the ones not getting rides to school,” she said.
The Springdale School District says every day they can’t run 7 or 8 routes because 8% of drivers won’t come to work because of being sick or medical appointments. He says more than 40% of drivers are over the age of 65.
Conkin says a few years ago the district ran 123 routes and they’ve grown even more since then, but they’ve been able to get it down to 89 routes because they switched to a tear-timed system. This means each driver has an elementary run, middle school run, and a junior high or high school run all without any time between pickups and drop-offs. He says when they find out they can’t run the route parents are notified by way of their principals.
“I come in the office and the route coordinator is crying, we’re just all about in tears here to get these because we love kids. We want the best thing for students, so it is very disheartening to have to call and say your bus is canceled or what if the child does not get the information and is at a bus stop,” he said.
The bus driver shortage is also a problem at Bentonville and Fayetteville School Districts. All districts say all interested candidates are encouraged to apply.