November 21, 2024
We are excited to welcome more newly licensed drivers to the transportation team. Since our last update Peggy Russin, Jeff Verannos, Rick Cota, David Hilbich and Talan Bryant have gotten their bus driver licenses. We are so grateful to Brice Goldsborough and Jeff Spengler who have spent so much time working with our new team members to train and support them to licensure.
Please be aware that we will be working on adjusting some of our routes over the next week. We will send updates to families that have new arrival or departure times. We anticipate that any changes will only slight adjustment times, nothing too drastic! We are excited to get all our students to all their assigned locations in a smooth and timely manner.
Again we extend our thanks to the families and staff members who have been with us on this very long journey of limited transportation services. Your patience, flexibility and support have not gone unnoticed!
November 7, 2024
We are excited to welcome Greg Tuffy to the transportation team. Greg was a true rockstar. With no previous experience, he was able to get his school bus license in just one month! Kudos to Greg and his trainers at the Bus Depot!
With the addition of Greg, and our other new drivers, we are now able to run all our routes with no cancellations! It has taken us a long time to get to this point. We are so grateful to our team of drivers and trainers, as well as our parents and community members, for your partnership and patience. We understand the hardship this has placed on parents, students and caregivers. Thank you for your patience, your suggestions and your work with your neighbors to get all our students to school each day. We do ask that you continue to watch the Transportation Dashboard and your email for any route cancellations related to driver illness, weather, traffic, etc.
As we ramp up our Transportation team, we will also be reviewing our routes to look for efficiencies and changes to get all students to school and events as seamlessly as possible. With any changes or updates we make to the routes, there could be adjustments to pick-up or drop-off times. We will communicate any changes to families through email.
We are always looking for substitute van drivers and bus monitors. These positions are VERY flexible and can work with any availability you’d like to offer. No special license is needed, and no long-term commitment is required! Just want to help out your community? Give back by helping transport children around our district!
October 24, 2024
We are excited to announce that John Elowson passed his school bus driver's license test last Friday. Congratulations to John!
We have several other driver trainees with testing dates in November as not every trainee has the same training timeline to licensure. We are working with new employees who have previously been drivers and others who are completely new (and excited!) to learn to drive a school bus.
Of the folks who I’ve helped interview, the theme I’ve heard most frequently from the candidates is “I’m excited to help out my community”. South Burlington is a special place and we are lucky to have these new team members support our children.
If you are also looking for a way to support this community, please consider becoming a school bus aide! A school bus monitor or aide is another adult on the bus who supports the students. You might be helping students remember the rules of how to ride the bus safely, or you might be supporting students onto the bus or into their seatbelts. This is a part-time, very flexible position. Let us know when you are available and we will match you to our schedule!
October 10, 2024
As we enter October, there are many new employees in the transportation department! Our bus depot fills up each morning with employees arriving for on the job training with our team. We have some team members scheduled to take some of their tests with the DMV this month. Send some positive thoughts this way to help them pass their tests! And a special thanks to our current drivers who are working together to train our new employees.
We are excited to share that Guy Williamson is our latest newly licensed driver! Guy passed his test on a Monday and started driving a route the very next day. If you see him driving a bus in your neighborhood, be sure to give him a wave!
September 26, 2024
The transportation department was once again featured in this MyNBC5 story and
we are excited to report that we are in the process of onboarding many new school bus driver candidates! Some new members of the transportation team are interested in becoming regular route drivers, and others are happy to help out with trips and other needs in a more part time capacity.
We have some new employees who were previously licensed bus drivers. Their timeline to being fully re-licensed and able to drive a bus is much quicker than others who have never been licensed.We are also onboarding several other new employees who are excited to become bus drivers for the first time! We recognize that like our students, each new employee’s training timeline and learning speed is unique to them. In general employees training to become bus drivers take anywhere from one to three months to complete their licensure.
We are hopeful that these new team members will begin to make an impact on our busing in the next few months.
September 12, 2024
For questions and concerns about transportation, please contact Stephanie Hyatt, Transportation Dispatcher. Stephanie is the point of contact for families with questions about transportation in-the-moment. She can be reached at 802-233-0673. For general questions, please reach out to Jean-Marie Clark, Operations Director, at jclark@sbschools.net.
Clark gave a new report to the School Board (starts at 2:42:30) on September 4th about the state of the transportation department. In summary that reports says:
We continue to make updates to streamline our transportation needs. This week, we opened the elementary schools at 7:35 am so students could be dropped off sooner to get middle school students to school on time. The school day will still begin at 8:05 am, but we are grateful to the staff coming in earlier to accommodate this change.
One of our drivers who recently retired has decided to return and is driving already. In addition, three new drivers have been hired but they need to renew their CDLs, so they won’t be in buses for another few weeks. A current trainee is scheduled to take his CDL test on September 16th.
There has also been a lot of interest from applicants who have never driven a bus before. We are in the process of hiring and onboarding new team members as trainees, who have been hired as substitute drivers. Once they complete their licensure, we will determine if they want to become regular route drivers or only do special requests like athletic events and field trips. Plus, there are still other applicants that still need to be interviewed.
We’re aware that not all may make it through the entire licensure process but the number of applicants is heartening. In addition, some of our coaches and other current employees have also shown interest in getting their licenses so they could drive students to sporting events.
Want to hear more updates on transportation? Visit our Transportation Update page where all news will be posted.
We are here to support you and your students and we sincerely apologize for the difficulty so far. Please know that we are taking every possible action to improve transportation.
August 29, 2024
In an effort to attract and retain drivers, the school board approved a new pay scale that went into effect August 1st. Our drivers in training now make $33.20/ hour and move to $35.42/hour once they are licensed. After one year of licensure with the district, drivers move to $39.46/hour. After 20 years, drivers make $42.66/hour. The district offers paid training, flexible schedules for full, part time and sub options, great benefits, and higher hourly pay! We are also offering a $1,000 bonus for any employee who refers a bus driver.
As a result of this increase and the recent ad we ran, one previous driver has returned to the district and one recent retiree returned. We’ve also received 5 applications last week, all of which have been interviewed. Of those applicants, one is ready to drive, and one other needs to renew their bus driving endorsement. The others are interested in training with the district to become drivers. We’ve also had several phone calls from folks who had questions before they were ready to officially apply.
As the process of going from permitted driver to fully licensed can take many months, we are also bolstering our on site training program by bringing one of our retired drivers back in as a trainer for our new employees.
We are excited to announce that we have added Stephanie Hyatt to the operations and transportation team. She will be the main point of contact for families with questions about transportation in the moment. She can be reached at 802-233-0673. Welcome Stephanie! For general questions, please reach out to Jean-Marie Clark, Operations Director at jclark@sbschools.net.
As a result of feedback from families, we are moving away from rolling cancellations. We have instated standard, regular route cancellations. We hope that knowing a certain bus is canceled the same day each week will help our families plan for and make adjustments for transportation.
As the school year begins, please be sure to check our Transportation page and Transportation Updates on the district page. A new, easier to read dashboard is coming soon! You can also access the transportation dashboard (which has info about route changes and cancellations), from both the transportation page and it is linked from the gray buttons on each schools homepage.
What can parents/guardians do?
An important thing to do for the beginning of each school year is to verify and correct your contact information in Powerschool. We use that information to communicate changes and updates to families. Do we have the email address you check most frequently? Do you need to add a new cell phone number? Be sure to check!
You can also advocate for:
State support in incentivising folks getting CDLs and the school bus driver endorsement, supporting training programs for school bus drivers, creating more test locations state-wide, and implementing financial incentives for getting school bus licensure.This is a State issue and we’re all in this together.
Want to hear more updates on transportation? Watch Operations Director, Jean-Marie Clark’s report to the School Board (minute 54.15). We are here to support you and your students and we sincerely apologize for the difficulty so far. Please know that we are taking every possible action to improve transportation
August 19, 2024
Dear Parents/Guardians,
Welcome to the new 2024-2025 school year! We are excited to welcome and transport your children to our school buildings.
The school bus driver shortage has been an ongoing national and state wide challenge, and our district has been no different. We have doubled down on our efforts this summer to increase our staffing in the transportation department. We have done some major and minor things to improve our situation. You may have seen some of our new marketing in our social media accounts, as well as commercials on our local television stations. We worked with a national bus company to create a partnership with them to provide some route coverage. Unfortunately, they too were unable to locate drivers to assist us. We have also simply reached out to former job applicants from previous years. Additionally, the district enacted an employee referral program, rewarding current employees with a $1000 bonus for each new bus driver they referred to join our team. I know that our current drivers have reached out to their colleagues across the area, encouraging folks to join or rejoin the transportation team.
We are also partnering with the city and Green Mountain Transit to support transporting our students. This is a work in progress, with some future goals. We want the community to know that we are grateful for our community partners who are willing to help us problem solve this crisis.
Our biggest effort has been around increasing our hourly pay rate for bus drivers. We are grateful for our partners with the union and the school board, who helped us craft a new pay structure for our bus drivers. The new pay rate truly recognizes and rewards the bus drivers for the vitally important work they do, as well as positioning the district correctly in this competitive job market.
It is important to note that training a new driver is no small endeavor. Like our students, our drivers learn at all different paces. It can take some just a month or two to become fully licensed, while it can take others much longer. But having safe drivers transporting our children is our highest goal. The goal is not a speedy training program. While we had hoped to start the new school year in a dramatically different position than where we ended, unfortunately, we are not currently in a better position. The good news I bring to the families is that we do have some new candidates in the employment and training process.
We ask that families offer the district and our transportation team some grace as we start this school year with limited staff. We are all very hopeful that our efforts this summer will bring new bus drivers to our district, and our cancellations and accommodations we’ve requested of families will come to an end soon. We also ask that families be our partner! Do you know someone who might be interested in becoming a driver? We have positions that are full and part time! If a bus driver only wants to transport for the regular morning and afternoon runs, we can accommodate. If a driver wants to join our team just to help out with special trips and athletic events, we’d be so excited to have them on our team!
Best,
Jean-Marie Clark
Director of Operations
South Burlington School District
May 23, 2024
As we continue to explore alternate ways to support transportation, we continue to develop Safe Routes to School plans that focus on increasing walking/biking, and with that the implementation of school zones at four of our schools, and looking into partnerships with GMT, as our neighbors in Burlington School District have done.
There is a special City Council meeting on June 3rd where the Safe Routes to School committee will be asking the Council to approve the Resolution for the Establishment of Safe Routes to School Working Group. The agenda for the meeting has not posted, but it can be found here.
Please take a moment to contribute to the "NEW TOOL" map to identify if a street appears to be a safe route for walking or biking to school but lacks a sidewalk. You can also fill out the South Burlington Active Transportation Plan survey to provide input on the plan.
Green Mountain Transit sent an update this week for students who use GMT to get to school:
Starting May 20, 2024, students who utilize GMT buses for their daily commute will be required to inform the bus driver that they are a school student in order to continue receiving free transit service. This change is being implemented to ensure that only eligible students are availing of this benefit and to streamline the process for both students and bus drivers.
We understand that this adjustment may require some additional communication with your child to ensure they are aware of the new requirement. We encourage you to remind them to inform the bus driver of their status as a school student when boarding the bus.
Please note that this change applies specifically to students who utilize GMT buses as part of their transportation to and from school. If your child does not use GMT buses or if they have alternative transportation arrangements, this update does not affect them.