Citing a need to keep buses rolling, the St. Paul school district in recent months used federal COVID relief money to award bonuses to its union drivers and assist private companies with their recruitment and retention efforts.
The moves come amid a long-running driver shortage that in 2021-22 led St. Paul to abruptly slash the number of routes offered.
The state's second-largest district now hopes to bump that number back up from 175 to 209 routes this fall. But high school students who were directed to use Metro Transit buses a year ago will continue to do so in 2022-23.
St. Paul made retention bonuses of $1,500 per union member for each of the past two school years a key part of its bargaining strategy. The bonuses recognized the employees' "hard work throughout the pandemic," spokeswoman Erica Wacker said.
The district also steered $581,778 in federal money to private bus and van contractors. Drivers working for 13 such companies handle the bulk of student transportation.
Jackie Turner, the district's operations officer, said Thursday that the funds were made available based on the number of routes each company runs. The district's primary goal, she said, was to help them keep their drivers, perhaps through bonuses, but they also were free to use the money for other purposes such as hiring incentives.
"We didn't micromanage," she said. "They could make it work within the policies and procedures of their own companies."
The helping hand stands in contrast to what occurred in the 2020-21 school year.
Then, Shelly Jonas, executive director of the Minnesota School Bus Operators Association, made a case in correspondence with administrators across the state that companies should be kept whole during the pandemic — citing guidance from the state Department of Education.
At the end of that year, Jonas surveyed members and learned that 60 % had their contracts honored in full — minus fuel savings — and 7 % had been offered and had accepted a lesser amount than their contracts called for. St. Paul paid its companies 50%.
Jonas said that honoring the contracts would have ensured that bus drivers and fleets could "re-engage immediately and fully" with a return to in-person learning.
This week, Turner said that the district decided to pay half in 2020-21 because students were learning remotely for a good part of the year, yet it still wanted drivers to be paid. The district didn't lose any of its contractors, she said, but the companies did lose drivers.
"A number of drivers left the field," Turner said.
Jonas said many companies across the state are "kind of digging themselves out of the last two years," and that while the shortage does not appear as severe as a year ago, hiring remains a challenge. Wages are being raised, and companies are turning to creative means such as bringing buses to parking lots so people can take test drives, she said.
Turner told school board members last week that operators who had been paying drivers $18 to $21 an hour now are paying an average of $21 to $25 and that the wage increases, combined with rising fuel costs and other factors, will result in the district paying up to an additional $4.2 million in contract costs for bus service in the coming year.
The district is working with companies to determine where its new routes will be.
As for its high schoolers, officials say every eighth-grader in the district received a two-day lesson this spring on how to use Metro Transit. This summer, the district also gave them a chance to practice by ordering 650 summer passes for some of those eighth-graders plus students at LEAP High and other secondary school programs.
Communication on how to plan trips and ride safely will ramp up in August, officials say.
