SAN ANTONIO — Last Wednesday, ECISD mother Margaret Elizondo received a familiar phone call from the school district. There would not be a bus available for Oak Crest Elementary School and her student would be sent home on the middle school bus instead. Elizondo said it’s been this way for three weeks and the school district still didn’t have enough drivers.
“Bus 65 is consistently without a driver. So the kids will just sit in the cafeteria, all the kids that ride that bus from when they dismiss at 3:40 to about 5 p.m,” Elizondo said.
The parent said ECISD had tried to create a staggered bus schedule so some elementary schools let out earlier and drivers have more time to drop kids off. She said it was often not successful and her elementary school kids were still riding with middle school kids.
Elizondo also said some parents have difficulty tracking their kids. She said the district uses an app, called Here Comes the Bus, which allows parents to track the bus that their child would normally be on. She said, when the students are put on a different bus than they are normally assigned to, parents can’t track the alternate bus.
Elizondo now works from home as much as possible so she can pick her kids up.
“I go pick them up because that’s what moms do, but there are a lot of families that don’t have that flexibility with work,” Elizondo sad.
KENS 5 reached out to ECISD on Tuesday about the driver shortage. The district said they are working to hire more drivers and some of their drivers are currently handling multiple routes to cover all the campuses.
The district said in a statement, “We offer a range of exceptional benefits and bonuses. ECISD takes care of its employees wellbeing by providing free primary care services though CARE ACT clinics along with free generic medications”. The district also said their pay was on par with other districts. Anyone interested in applying for a bus driver position can contact the ECISD at 210 634 6200 or apply at https://www.ecisd.net/careers.
The district also told KENS 5, “We have a number of routes that cater to elementary, middle, and high school students simultaneously, and historically, this arrangement has not posed any significant issues. However, we acknowledge that one Oak Crest route has been experiencing occasional delays in the afternoons due to a shortage of drivers.”
Director of Marketing & Communications Brandon Oliver said the district would investigate if a specific bus route was falling behind.
KENS 5 sent the district additional questions about the app used to track district buses on Thursday.