Prince George school bus driver resignations leads to cancelled routes on first day of school

The first day of school did not go as planned for many students in School District No. 57 (SD57) who need to catch a ride on the school bus.

The night before the first day of school, parents received an email informing them that four school bus routes had been cancelled due to a school bus driver shortage.

“As you may be aware the ongoing shortage of School Bus Drivers continues to be an issue for Student Transportation providers across North America. Over the past three months we have been working to secure drivers for all of SD57 routes and have been getting close to the number required to deliver service to all families,” read the email.

“Unfortunately, we have had several drivers that had committed to taking routes tender their resignations over the past 48 hours. Therefore, we will not be able to provide service to your children. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

One parent told the Citizen her kids weren’t able to attend the first day of school because of the bussing issues.

She added that during the previous school year she also experienced many days with no bus which had a huge impact on her family as her children attend school in Pineview and she has to commute to work in town.

“We know it is disappointing news and it is not how we envisioned the first day of school going for so many of our students and we are continuing to work to resolve the issue,” said superintendent Cindy Heitman.

“Our focus is of course, on student safety as we work with the new provider, we’re adjusting stops and routes for the optimum student rider experience.”

First Student, Inc., has taken over the school bussing contract from Diversified Transportation, which has been the SD57 busing contractor for the past 15 years.

The Ohio-based company operates a fleet of 50,000 buses all over North America and is now responsible for serving about 3,500 students on 63 operating routes in Prince George, Mackenzie, McBride and Valemount.

“In every industry, we're seeing difficulties staffing and we're seeing whole supply chain challenges in all industries,” added Heitman.

“This isn't unlike what we saw last year, with canceled routes. Unfortunately, we were really hopeful we wouldn't see it this year and I'm very hopeful and confident that First Student will resolve this issue as soon as possible.”

She said this may mean some routes may have to be rescheduled or redesigned but that information will be sent to families and to school websites as soon as possible.

Heitman said busing information will be sent to parent’s personal email accounts they provided when they registered for busing. In addition, information will be posted to the district website and pushed out to the affected schools’ websites.

“I would like parents just to know that we are working really hard on resolving this issue and we are sorry that the first day of school did not go how families had envisioned.”

- with files from Ted Clarke