BPS scrambles to fill jobs
Bus drivers, kitchen workers in high demand
If you ever wanted to drive a bunch of kids to school or serve them food, now’s your chance — Boston Public Schools is looking high and low for bus drivers and cafeteria workers before the start of the school year next week.
“I strongly encourage anyone interested in joining us at team BPS to apply,” said Boston Public Schools Superintendent Brenda Cassellius, citing “significant” staffing shortages among bus drivers in particular.
“We are working through some staffing challenges ahead of our school year as a result of many recent retirements and national employment trends,” Cassellius told reporters in a back-to-school press conference on Thursday.
Cassellius made her pitch, reading the BPS website out loud and telling people how to apply. And then the city reiterated the point in a news release a couple of hours later, touting the $26.65 an hour plus benefits for drivers and the additional need for bus monitors and food-service workers.
Cassellius said the district normally has about 700 to 720 bus drivers, and right now has just a bit more than 650.
Asked how that’s going to affect the ability to get kids to school on time, Cassellius said, “They’re still getting to the bottom of that,” due to the immensely complex busing process the district undertakes.
The school transportation system is an evergreen issue in Boston, where students regularly go to schools across the city. That’s led to what the district recently characterized as the highest per-pupil spending on transportation in the county besides Buffalo, N.Y. The busing system runs more than $120 million a year normally, and at times has struggled during the starts of years to get kids to school on time.
After a year that featured heavy remote learning during the pandemic, essentially all kids will be back in classrooms when the academic year begins next week.
Acting Mayor Kim Janey’s mayoral rival John Barros put out a statement criticizing the district for not getting ahead of the staffing issues further before the start of school.
“With hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid coming to Boston, Acting Mayor Janey has no excuse for not having enough bus drivers on the first day of school,” Barros said. “If low wages are creating a hiring problem, we need to provide competitive incentives and wages. If BPS’s private bus contractor can’t get the job done, we need to work with them to fill the gap with alternatives.”