Just thinking today as my kid was being dropped off at the bus stop. How much do school bus drivers get paid? I have always heard it wasn’t much, but then do we really want our kids being driven around by someone making minimum wage? Are they paid by the hour or a flat rate per week? If by the hour, how many can they get a week? They only drive a couple hours a day.
The answer is not much. In my area they get paid per route. It’s a flat rate. Some routes pay more then others. Considering the time involved doing pre and post route checks, traffic delays, paperwork or extra time spent due to unruly kids etc. with the totality of hours it works out to a part time job that pays 8-9 dollars an hour.
The Schools tend to have staggered schedules to allow drivers to do a few routes each day. Pick up the high school kids drop them off at school, then pick up the elementary school kids bring them to school. Kill some time. Pick up the High-schoolers drop them at home and so on.
Either we do want our kids being driven around by people paid minimum wage or people are just blissfully ignorant of how much drivers make.
That’s really a shame to hear. It seems that it is a more difficult job that what appear on the surface. It isn’t just driving, it is being responsible for 50 or 60 kids. I would think/hope that they would be valued a bit higher by the schools.
When I was out of work in 2009 I looked into it. I would have been paid $50 a day.
(Ontario, Canada)
Drove School buses in the '90s. Made $7.50 per hour. You had your daily route for school, then signed up for charters. If you could get some good charters, with layover time, you made some good hours for the week, just your route would only get you 10, 15 hours for the short ones, maybe 20-25 for the the long ones. Your route was given by seniority. Charters were by seniority and time slot. You couldn’t drive a charter that would interfere with your main route.
Yes.
That’s why they are.