Bus drivers are difficult to find, keep, schools say.

Byline: Anne Williams The Register-Guard

Eugene retiree Joe Levell drives a school bus because he loves being around kids and appreciates a little extra spending money.

"Plus my wife said, `You need to get out and do something,'?" added Levell, who owned a business and worked in recreation administration for much of his career. "I have too much time on my hands."

But Levell understands why more and more of his colleagues are fleeing their jobs, and why the Eugene School District - like school systems across Oregon and elsewhere - is scrambling to find and keep qualified replacements. Given the low pay, daily stress and odd, part-time hours, it simply doesn't make sense for most people, he said.

"To me, it's not about the money, or I wouldn't be doing it," said Levell, who drives daily Howard and Awbrey Park elementary school and Madison Middle School routes. "But for a lot of my fellow drivers, they need the money."

On Wednesday, the Eugene School Board took a small step to remedy the situation, agreeing to bump up bus driver wages across the board by one pay grade. With the change, a beginning bus driver will earn $12.71 an hour, up from $11.89, Labor Relations Director Ted Heid said. Minimum wage in Oregon is $7.95.

The board also agreed to boost wages for entry-level custodians by one pay grade. Those employees will now start at $11.14 an hour, up from $10.45, Heid said.

In recent years, the pool of qualified applicants for both of those positions has been shrinking, Heid said, and turnover rates have climbed, with many new hires leaving for better jobs and others failing to pass muster.

"I think one thing is that over the last four or five years, the labor market has improved and there were better, higher-paying jobs out there," he said.

Working with the local chapter of the Oregon School Employees Association, which represents bus drivers and custodians, the district regularly conducts market surveys to see how its wages for particular positions hold up in both the public and private sectors.

The two parties approved a four-year contract last October, but agreed to revisit the issue of custodial pay - both entry-level and custodian coordinator, a position that carries more responsibility. The latest survey results found entry-level pay significantly below market levels, Heid said, but wages for custodian coordinator only slightly below. The OSEA wanted raises for both positions, chapter President Jill Simmons said, but for now the board agreed to boost only entry-level pay.

The district also surveyed bus driver wages and found that, while they're fairly comparable to those in nearby school districts, they lag well behind pay for most public- and private--sector driving jobs, Heid said.

Transportation Manager Jan Anderson said her department is continually seeking drivers, most of whom start out in the substitute pool before landing one of more than 70 permanent spots. Lately, she finds herself regularly shorthanded, and has to tap office workers and mechanics - all of them licensed to drive buses - into service.

"We start drawing from our staff and taking them away from what they're doing," she said.

The district also has had to turn to charter companies more frequently for sporting events and school trips - at an extra cost of more than $48,000 in 2006-07, Anderson wrote in a memo to the school board.

And once a hire is made, the odds of the driver staying more than a year have slimmed, she noted. Of the drivers hired in 2002-03, for example, 88 percent stayed for a second year; last year, just 66 percent did so - although that was up from 58 percent of the previous year's crop.

While most of those drivers left for other jobs, terminations are also on the rise. In her memo to the board, Anderson said she had to fire three drivers in 2005-06 "for issues directly related to student safety and/or severe student behavior management problems," compared to two per year the previous four years and one per year the three years before that.

"We had given additional training for most of these employees and had given additional support but most of these employees were applicants we would not have hired if we had had a better pool to select from," she wrote.

Both Heid and Anderson said expectations and accountability of bus drivers are mounting, as are student behavior problems. Drivers are trained in behavior management, but Levell, now in his fifth year of driving, said it still takes a special set of skills to successfully monitor and manage behavior while safely navigating roadways.

He finds himself playing the role of school counselor on occasion, too.

"The requirements are, I think, pretty immense," he said.