ELK GROVE, Calif. — Three-year-old Isaac Barnett attends Butler Elementary, a special education preschool in Elk Grove, and his mother Amber says getting transportation for students hasn’t been easy.
“Pick up time is suppose to be 7:12 a.m., so we weren’t advised that they would be coming two hours late every day... he has a bus driver but, according to the bus driver, he will also be two hours late everyday,” Barnett said.
Two hours late means her son wouldn’t get to class until 9:45 a.m. That would be 2/3's of the way into his three-hour class.
“Having him late for class is not an option for us. He is already in special education. He already has special needs; missing instruction was not an option,” Barnett said.
Elk Grove Unified School District has 150 total bus routes and only 100 drivers. A spokesperson for the district says they are aware of the bus driver shortage. They say they are looking to help solve the problem by bringing in different transportation that doesn’t require drivers to have the same certification that driving a school bus does.
“We are able to work with the white vans, short of like a shuttle if you will, to get certain students, and that allows the bigger bus to take on a full route and have coverage on their route,” said Xanthi Pinkerton, spokesperson for Elk Grove Unified.
The district says any parents whose child rides the bus can track their student's bus route and time of arrival through the app "Here Comes the Bus." The district also says they are aware that the shortage of drivers is causing students to be late to class.
“We have a process in place when that occurs where at the school site there’s no punitive action taken against the child,” Pinkerton said.
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