CISD bus drivers get boost in pay
As Montgomery County and The Woodlands continue to grow and more people move into the area, the Conroe Independent School District is facing an issue of retaining and recruiting school bus drivers.
To keep CISD bus driver pay competitive, the board of trustees last month made a unanimous decision at the bequest of CISD chief financial officer Dan Cox to raise bus driver hourly pay rates by $1.
This affected all bus drivers in the district. Base salaries for drivers was $13.70 per hour and, since the raise went into effect May 1, the base pay for all new bus drivers is $14.50.
“I think what’s important is our staff has stepped up throughout this year even when we had these significant shortages and covered the routes,” Cox said. “We had staff driving. It was a real challenge, but employees made it happen, and we appreciate that, but we want to correct that situation.”
From the early mornings to late in the evenings, bus drivers ensure kids in the districts make it safely to school and back home. Each driver is assigned to a route, and there are currently 354 routes that serve around 30,000 students.
“There are two goals: Fill the open positions, and retain the existing employees that we have,” Cox said.
CISD is competing with Aldine, Spring, Katy and other school districts to retain and attract new bus drivers as it continues to meet the community’s needs and expand. The district is expected to expand the transportation budget by about $400,000 to cover the pay increase.
“You do not have a healthy education system unless you get your kids to school. You don’t have school as a matter of fact,” said board president John Husbands. “Anytime one area is out of whack, this goes as proof that we will respond quickly. We’re not waiting for our new budget year; we’re responding right now.”
With 28 open positions and about 10 new routes added a year, the district is trying to keep up with the population growth and still be a competitive employer of school bus drivers.
“I think one of the biggest things is our drivers, some get up as early as four in the morning to start the routes, they’ll work until late in the evening, and it takes a special person to be a school bus driver,” said Sam Davila, CISD director of transportation.
As of the pay increase, CISD is ranked as the fourth-highest-paying school district for bus driver base salaries and has the fourth-highest average salary for bus drivers in comparison to 10 other neighboring districts, including New Caney ISD, Tomball ISD, and Spring ISD. Katy, Aldine and Cypress-Fairbanks school districts consistently rank in the top three highest-paying districts in terms of bus driver salaries, according to the most recent Texas Association of School Boards compensation report.
The pay raise comes on the heels of a pay raise for substitute teachers in CISD to help stem the shortage of substitutes on Mondays and Fridays.
The district’s $10 pay increase means $100 per day for certified teachers and $90 per day for noncertified teachers. After instituting the pay increase earlier this year, fill rates for substitutes on Mondays and Fridays was 86 percent, up 6.2 percent.
In addition to the pay raise for bus drivers, the CISD board of trustees unanimously approved a bulk purchase of new school buses. The district will spend $2,613,725 on the purchase of 23 buses.