Going back to school might not be all unicorn agendas and rainbow glitter pens this fall. From teachers to bus drivers, ongoing shortages of some of the K-12 education system’s most integral workers is creating a recipe for disaster for both students and their parents. Both shortages began well before the pandemic, only to intensify as the Great Resignation swept across the nation in many industries as workers became fed up with their suboptimal pay and working conditions. Two years after the Great Resignation began—which many experts say is now over—and there still aren’t enough bus drivers and teachers.
The low pay and high demands of a bus driver have always made the role difficult to hire for, but it’s now become a full-on crisis, reports USA TODAY’s Alia Wong. She got a first look at data from HopSkipDive, a ride sharing app for children and older adults, which found that a whopping 92% of school leaders said they’ve constrained operations as a result, up from 88% in 2022 and 78% in 2021. Wong’s analysis of news coverage and data found that every state has had “at least one instance of a major school bus driver shortage” this year.
Many drivers are opting to join private corporations, which can offer greater benefits, Phil Giaramita, a spokesperson for Albemarle County Public Schools in Virginia told CBS. “We recently lost a driver to a private business that gave the driver, as an incentive, a rent-free home,” he said. “Hard to compete with that, but an idea of just how intense the competition is for anyone with a commercial driver’s license.”
The gaping bus driver hole is disrupting routes, making it difficult not only for children to get to school but for school to even happen at all. It reached a boiling point in Kentucky’s Jefferson County, where class was suspended while district leaders tried to figure out a bus schedule. And Florida’s Hillsborough County Public Schools district experienced delays on the first two days of school, The New York Times reports. It’s all especially problematic for lower-income students and children with special needs who are more dependent on public infrastructure to get to school, HopSkipDrive co-founder Joanna McFarland told Wong.
Teachers are dealing with a similar story. Consistently underpaid and burned out, many left a field with an already low retention rate for better salaries and a better work-life balance as remote work put an extra strain on their jobs. Non-profit organization Chalkbeat, which looked at turnover in the 2021-2022 school year and this past year, found that teacher turnover reached the “highest point in at least five years” in eight states—meaning that “in a school district of around 50 teachers one more than usual left after last school year,” it noted.
Some educators cited extra political involvement as a reason for leaving, as laws that censor critical race theory, LGBTQ+ rights, and sex education invade the classroom. Safety is also an issue; teachers are put in the line of fire, left unprotected in an era of school shootings. It’s left tens of thousands open teaching roles and greater than 160,000 positions that an under qualified teacher was hired for, per research from Tuan Nguyen, professor at Kansas State University’s College of Education, as cited by Axios.
Administrators told NBC News that they are turning to substitute teachers and emergency certified teachers with no experience for help, as well as increasing class sizes. But Brookings finds that high turnover and hiring under-qualified teachers as a replacement hampers academic performance, meaning that students aren’t getting the support they need as they try to make up for pandemic learning losses. This especially affects students of color, from low-income backgrounds or rural communities, and those with disabilities.
It seems as if these shortages will persist until both professions receive better working conditions and better pay. Until then, both children and their parents will deal with the ripple effects, as working parents try to navigate the new chaos of school drop-offs and childcare as they return to the office. That’s not to mention the skyrocketing costs of their children’s education, from childcare to back to school shopping that is more expensive than ever, thanks to slowing, but persistent inflation.
But what type of pencil to get is the least of anyone’s worries when a lack of teachers and bus drivers is creating much bigger problems.