Since the COVID-19 pandemic response, the Sedona-Oak Creek School District has been operating with about 50% fewer bus drivers; this has caused the seven drivers currently on staff to work longer hours, fewer stops for children and about a 30-minute longer bus rides per trip.

“I ride this bus for about 90 minutes each way,” West Sedona School second-grader Pepper Marschall told West Sedona School Principal Alisa Stieg and SOCSD Superintendent Tom Swaninger, Ph.D., along with her classmate Stella Papiernick earlier this fall.

“I ride this bus for about 100 minutes each way,” wrote Papiernick, who was recently awarded West Sedona School’s December Student of the Month.

“We have working parents and they can’t always stop what they are doing to drive 30 minutes each way to pick us up,” Marschall and Papiernick wrote. “We live 30 to 40 minutes away so we have to ride the bus.”

The district operates 18 buses and two white coach buses, but ongoing driver shortages have doubled the workload for existing staff. Before the pandemic, drivers typically handled one route in the morning and one in the afternoon. Currently drivers have two or three routes during both time frames.

“We have good kids and great people that we work with [and] we pay very well and we’re going to have some new buses to drive,” said Director of Transportation Vickie Gann, who has been

with the district for 13 years. She has also stepped in to drive buses when needed. “We need to be able to get the kids to and from school and at the rate we’re going next year is going to be tough.”

Gann attributes the driver shortage to industry-wide challenges exacerbated by COVID and the legalization of marijuana, which disqualifies potential hires from driving school buses under federal transportation guidelines.

“In the last two years, I’ve had to turn away probably five drivers because they do marijuana and that’s a lot when you don’t have a big percentage coming in [to apply],” Gann said.

Nationwide two-thirds of school bus drivers are over the age of 50, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

“It’s usually men and women that are retired, because of the schedule,” Gann said. “A 25-year-old guy can’t survive on 20 hours a week. But COVID hit, and then the older people that were applying and were driving for us are not going to drive anymore because of COVID.

“COVID hit the industry hard across the board.”

Across the nation there were approximately 199,000 public school bus drivers, which is a 12% decrease from September 2019 according to a November 2024 study by the Economic Policy Institute.

“Asking fewer bus drivers to pick up more students means longer routes, earlier morning pick-ups, and later drop-offs,” EPI wrote. “These burdensome logistics can increase the likelihood of a student missing school time and diminish their chances of participating in other activities — not to mention the additional burden they can place on parents trying to coordinate work schedules.”

EPI identified low wages as the main cause of the national driver shortage, finding that drivers typically earn 43% less than the median weekly wage for all workers, and that driver’s weekly earnings have fallen 2.8% over the last five years.

SOCSD provides an $18 per hour training salary with salaries a minimum of $21 per hour, after completion of training and obtaining a commercial driver’s license and school bus license. For comparison, the Cottonwood-Oak Creek School District provides the minimum wage to its drivers before they obtain their CDL and $16.90 per hour wage after obtaining one. The Sedona Shuttle Connect service pays its drivers $19.32 to $22.29 an hour. The Flagstaff Unified School District driver trainees start at $18 an hour and can be increased to $20 to $20.75 per hour.

“Our biggest dilemma here is competing with the [private tour companies] as far as getting drivers,” Gann said. “We don’t pay what the trolley’s people make and we don’t get tips. Drivers that have CLDs are going to these other places where they can make more money.”

Without enough drivers, sports trips and field trips are the first to suffer since the main priority is to get students to and from school daily.

Unlike larger districts, SOCSD does not offer competitive sign-on bonuses.

“We are in the very early stages of establishing our staffing budget for the next school year, so I don’t have an answer quite yet,” Swaninger said, when about new hire bonuses. “Pay rate, signing and retention bonuses [are] always a topic of discussion.”

However, the district does provide free CDL training.

“Training for the CDL is huge. I think that that brings more people in the door,” Gann said. “And then … the district bought two new buses, and so that will be huge.”

The fleet is five 2010 International School Buses, an 84-passenger 2010 International Bus, two 2009 International/Collins Special Ed Bus, a 48-passenger 2006 Thomas bus for sports, two 2018 Starcraft White buses for coaches to drive for sports, two new 2025 Blue Birds and a new 46 Passenger 2024 International Special Education Bus. Seven buses are out of service. The aging fleet has management and passenger issues from the need for frequent oil changes and the lack of air conditioning.

“Riding the bus for us is like being too long in a hot tub,” Marschall and Papiernick wrote to the district about the older bus they were riding in prior to the arrival of two new 2025 Blue Bird 77, passenger buses with air conditioning.

“We had two buses already go down this year [because] the engines went out,” Gann said. “So now I have [several] buses sitting out there that we’re going to get rid of. Some of them don’t start, some of them their fuel pump is out. To do the fuel pump, it’s $20,000 because the fuel pump is inside the engine. … [But] the district is finally starting to get some buses. These [older] buses also do not have A.C, and when it’s 100º outside it’s probably 105º” inside the older buses in the fleet.

Swaninger said SOCSD has plans to purchase two new buses and that both will be purchased next year or one next year and one in 2026.

“It’s a great place to work, the district is great [and] supports the drivers,” Gann said. “They know the job we’re doing is hard because we don’t have the people, and so most people can’t even take a day off, I’m working 10 hours a day.”

“Me and Stella have an extra 30 minutes on the bus now” in the morning and in the afternoon “because we don’t have enough bus drivers we need more bus drivers,” Marschall said previously.

For more information or to apply as a bus driver, visit sedonak12.org/JoinOurTeamCareers.aspx