How much should First Student be blamed for Buffalo schools’ transportation problems?

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To overcome Buffalo Public Schools’ transportation problems caused by a shortage of bus drivers, the district proposed changing the start and end times of the school day and also reimbursing parents for driving their children. at school.

But amid the search for innovative solutions, school board and teachers’ union members questioned why First Student, the district’s private transportation partner that receives about $50 million a year to transport students safely in yellow buses, suffered no consequences.

“I know this is a national crisis, but perhaps First Student, a major national company, should share some of the blame for not delivering on this costly contract,” wrote Larry Scott, member of the At-large school board, before September 19. 21 board meeting.

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The task force hopes to convince Governor Kathy Hochul to declare a state of emergency that would allow Superintendent Tonja M. Williams to implement a change to the district’s bell system.

Phil Rumore, president of the Buffalo Teachers Federation, responded Oct. 21 to the district’s proposal to stagger school start and end times by questioning why hiring more bus drivers wasn’t a more feasible solution. than disrupting the schedules of teachers and parents with such a mid-year. change.

First Student, through Primary Site Manager Rob Hummel in August and Corporate Communications Manager Jen Biddinger in December, highlighted the lengthy process required to become a bus driver in New York State. It takes months even if everything goes well, and several obstacles can hold a candidate back. The district’s fleet of drivers has grown from 440 to 472 since the start of the school year, although there were several hundred First Student applicants.

Obtaining the required Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) was the biggest hurdle. A CDL is not required to apply for and be hired by First Student, but is required for any active bus driver in the state. If hired by First Student before obtaining a CDL, the potential driver would see their way to a CDL paid for by First Student, with resources offered to guide them through the process.

“I wish they would hurry up and stop talking about it and do something about it,” said Anita Jones, mother of three Bennett Park Montessori students.

The New York Department of Motor Vehicles lists what appears to be a reasonable multi-step process for obtaining a CDL, but the brevity is deceptive. The path to a CDL got tougher on Feb. 7, when the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration added Beginner Driver Training (ELDT) to the existing gauntlet. But many local candidates remain stuck at the same point.

“In Buffalo, the written CDL permit test was difficult for some applicants,” Biddinger wrote in an email. “They are required to study federal guidelines for commercial licenses and must pass four parts of a written test, including the primary section, which is really geared toward commercial truck drivers.”

Biddinger was unable to say what proportion of bus driver applicants in Buffalo failed the written exam, and a spokesperson for the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles said his office did not keep track of the pass-fail rate of the CDL written exam.

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Erie County Clerk Michael P. “Mickey” Kearns for several months kept county DMV hours flexible to accommodate CDL test takers, including some hours on Saturdays. The Buffalo Public Schools Adult Learning Center also provided services to applicants. Those efforts helped ease the driver shortage, but Kearns still called the situation a “crisis point.”

“New York State needs to sharpen its pencil and be open to finding ways not to sacrifice Section 19-A safety standards, but to introduce a way to benefit sympathetic people who may be of good bus drivers,” Kearns said Thursday, offering apprenticeships or probationary periods as potential solutions.

Kearns echoed Biddinger in discussing the difficulties of the written license test. A level of computer literacy is required, which puts off some applicants, he said. But the results of the test, in which candidates only learn whether they pass or fail and receive no feedback on specific areas of struggle, offer little guidance to help those who fail in the future, Kearns said. Candidates can take the written test as many times as they wish.

“I can do things to make it easier to pass the test, but I can’t pass the test for them,” he said.

The federal drug test also poses problems for applicants, although less so in Buffalo than the written test, Biddinger said. FMCSA reports of all CDL pre-employment drug tests show more than 95,000 failures for marijuana from January 6, 2020 through October 2022. That’s four times more than for cocaine, the drug that has disqualified the candidates in second position. Marijuana has been legalized in New York State, but not federally.

Buffalo Public Schools is halfway through its five-year, $244.3 million deal with First Student that was signed in 2020, The News reported. The article about that deal described a sometimes rocky history between the district and its yellow bus supplier, but the final decision was for continuity and an effort to improve the relationship, while the $21 million difference between First Student and the next lowest bidder was also a factor.

District transportation data showed improvement in November due to a concerted recruiting effort between the district and First Student, assistance from Kearns, modified school programming and legislation signed by Governor Kathy Hochul that allowed third parties to administer the CDL road tests.

All but one of the school board members endorsed the motion, with an overwhelming sense that a creative solution must be attempted urgently.

Progress may reduce the pressure on First Student, but that doesn’t mean the bus driver’s problem is about to be solved. A district that maintained 630 bus routes in 2019 was reduced to 460 for this school year in part to handle transportation for 29,000 pre-K-8 students with existing bus driver staff. This meant that fewer bus helpers were needed to meet the target of one for each bus, but also that some buses carried up to 50 students at a time, resulting in bus journeys approaching an hour and a half. security problems caused by the density of students.

After-school programs have been limited to students with their own transportation and those who walk to school. The district’s new modified athletic program, a venture Superintendent Tonja M. Williams announced several times this fall, faces significant challenges early on with just six buses for 24 teams. And winter traditionally means a reduction in the number of bus drivers due to the nature of driving in bad weather.

Help is on the way. First Student, Hills said, got 10 to 12 drivers from other parts of the country to drive for Buffalo Public Schools between New Years and February vacation. But a big question remains: will foreign aid and the number of local candidates who obtain a CDL in December be enough to compensate for the usual drop in January?

Ben Tsujimoto can be reached at [email protected], (716) 849-6927 or on Twitter at @Tsuj10.

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