About a quarter of the 80 surveyed superintendents said they or other school administrators drive a bus.Statewide, Oklahoma public schools are experiencing a shortage of bus drivers — and they’re struggling to adapt.School districts of all sizes are having to get creative with their responses. Coweta Public Schools has had to keep students waiting to be picked up or taken home until other routes finish. Covington-Douglas Public Schools and Clinton Public Schools pay $35 an hour, and both have had positions open since before this school year.Guthrie Public Schools has to pay overtime to their drivers for after-school events. Beggs Public Schools has had to combine routes, resulting in some that are more than two hours long.StateImpact analyzed every public school district in Oklahoma and found that of the 400-plus schools with hiring listings accessible on their websites or that answered a superintendent survey, over 40% showed open driver positions. About a quarter of the 80 surveyed superintendents said they or other school administrators drive a bus.Sentinel Public Schools superintendent Jason Goostree is one of those. Sentinel is a small, rural district in western Oklahoma, about 120 miles from Oklahoma City. Most days, Goostree drives routes to and from school. He said he didn’t expect to drive buses as a superintendent and doesn’t think it will end anytime soon.“It’s one of those things where you feel like you’re responsible for everything that happens in the district,” Goostree said. “So it’s kind of, if this is what needs to happen to make sure things go smoothly, then that’s what you’re doing.”He recently met with his staff and rolled out a pitch for more field trip drivers. Being so far from a city center means it’s a non-starter for Sentinel to recruit drivers who don’t already work for the district or from the church across the street. A few teachers have their bus driving licenses, but he said it’s unfair to them and their students to pull them from their classrooms.“If we have a field trip… you can’t start yanking people out of their jobs all the time,” Goostree said. “So I got one person, for sure, out of that meeting that said she’s going to do it, and I’m working on a second. My goal was three, but if I can get two more people by the beginning of next year, that will help quite a bit.”While rural schools find unique ...
