By Steuart Pittman
I want to thank the many public servants, including four of my top staff, Dr. Arlotto and his top staff, Lyn Farrow from the Mayor’s Office, Senator Elfreth, Senator Beidle, Delegates Henson, Jones, and Bagnall, Councilperson Rodvien, Alderwoman Tierney, and School Board members Ellis, Tobin, and Schallheim who met yesterday afternoon to think outside the box about ways to get children to school while Anne Arundel County Public Schools (AACPS) contractors work to fulfill their contractual obligations to staff their routes.
Here is a partial list, from my notes, of what we are pursuing, as well as some of the obstacles in the way-
1. Offering financial assistance from federal funds to provide contractors with signing bonuses or other incentives so that they can remain competitive with companies that are actively working to poach their drivers. Doing so requires amendments to contracts and confirmation of American Rescue Plan (ARP) eligibility.
2. Overlapping public transportation with unstaffed routes and making it free for children 12 and over. Our Office of Transportation and their partners in the City of Annapolis met both Friday and Saturday to do exactly that. We will have an announcement later this week about fare-free expanded services in the Annapolis area.
3. Expediting the process for current CDL drivers who are county employees to be certified to drive children, and offering an incentive for some to temporarily fill in.
4. Helping to connect churches and other organizations that have vehicles with families needing rides. This offers some potential, but cannot be facilitated by AACPS due to school transportation regulations. We are exploring ways to facilitate this as private arrangements between parents and churches.
5. Facilitating the creation of carpools. Again, AACPS must keep a distance from these private arrangements, but our hope is that we can engage PTAs or other non-government groups in a coordinated initiative to move parents to a single carpooling app.
While none of these efforts solve the problem of what happens tomorrow and the rest of this week, AACPS has stepped up to keep parents informed about the status of routes in real time. At 4 am each school day, they review the staffing shortage reports from the contractors and by 5:15am for middle school and high school, and 6am for elementary school, emails and text messages have been sent to impacted households. The complete list of routes that are not served or are expected to be late is posted at 5 am at AACPS.org/buses
Ultimately, this crisis will be addressed when more people want to drive school buses. It’s a difficult job with massive responsibility, and it’s hard to live on what it pays in this county. Most drivers who work for contractors were not paid when school buildings were closed, and many found other work. Bringing them back will require incentives, and that will mean that contracts need to be renegotiated. Those things take time, but must happen.
I and my peers in neighboring counties hope that the Maryland State Department of Education will step up to coordinate a state response to this crisis, but if they do not, Anne Arundel County will be there with whatever support we can provide to get our kids to school.