Social studies teacher at Williams High School Robert Alvis said he has one student arrive 30 minutes late every day and another 10 minutes late because of a bus driver shortage in the county. Certain bus routes in the Alamance-Burlington School System for students who live further away from their schools have to make stops at multiple schools in the mornings, leading to students arriving late every day for class.
“There’s just literally nothing we can do to get them to school by the time the class starts,” Alvis said. “That is the amount of drivers we have, and there’s other students in other classes who have routinely the same problems.”
There are between 30 and 35 open positions for bus drivers in the county, Chad Aharon, ABSS driver’s education coordinator, said. But, this is not just a problem unique to Alamance County; school districts across the state and country are facing similar challenges. As of September 2024, there were 12.2% fewer school bus drivers on the road than September 2019, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute. Aharon said it is difficult for the district to compete with other higher paying roles when ABSS bus drivers are making between $17 and $18 an hour to drive a bus route and handle discipline issues on buses.
“It’s just like anything else in a capitalistic society, if you don’t pay for the work, then you’re not going to get a lot of people,” Aharon said.
The bus driver shortage in ABSS has grown since the COVID-19 pandemic, with more bus drivers choosing to retire, Aharon said. This can be a larger problem in some weeks for the county when multiple drivers call out sick, Aharon said.
Now, a year after Alamance County faced a mold crisis affecting 32 out of 36 schools and costing the county millions of dollars — the board of education is figuring out how to balance the 2025-26 budget. At the Feb. 24 board meeting, ABSS chief finance officer Tony Messer presented the proposed budget, which included increased supplemental pay and employee benefits for certified staff members.
Messer also presented a payment model for increasing pay for classified employees, after community support and previous conversations at board meetings. Certified employees include staff members such as teachers and administrators, whereas classified employees include bus drivers and education support specialists — or employees that do not require specific certifications in order to get hired. The proposal was a 46% increase from the current budget.
This also comes amid additional changes within the ABSS board of education after an announcement at the Feb. 24 meeting from board member Chuck Marsh, saying he is stepping down from his position. The board has yet to announce how it will select a new board member.
Alvis said he feels that all staff members should be prioritized within ABSS, as classified members help the schools function in many ways, including the school’s receptionist, who takes all parent calls and greets students each morning, child nutrition workers, teacher’s assistants and data managers.
Due to the budget constraints of last year, there was also a reduction in force across the county where several positions were eliminated. Alvis said one thing he liked about the proposed budget is that it reinstated some of those positions. Due to the reduction in force at Williams High School, Alvis said last year the school started with four assistant principals but ended the year with two.
“You can imagine how much of a struggle that was to try and run with half of the normal positions eliminated,” Alvis said.
There used to be a full-time user coordinator for the school library, but now that position is shared with Williams Middle School. The position of library coordinator was also already filling multiple roles as it handled maintaining the library itself, keeping track of and distributing Chromebooks to students and staff, and maintaining technology across the library.
“He’s here for half today at middle school for half the day, so for half the day when our students need to use the library or they have a computer issue that they need to go and get fixed. It’s, ‘Sorry, he’s in the middle school,’” Alvis said. “You already had individuals who were stretched pretty thin, but then you stretch them across two different schools as well.”
ABSS Board of Education member Seneca Rogers said many of the employee supplements, for both certified and classified employees, were things that the board had discussed previously, but due to the mold crisis were pushed back. Rogers said that budget constraints of the time made for hard decisions on what positions were cut.
“I can’t say any of those positions were not needed. I feel like all of, all of, the positions, all of the things that was done then, was all needed things,” Rogers said. “And even now, if you visit some of our schools and talking to principals, teachers, even some of the parents, they’ll tell you how they wish that that did not have to go on.”
Rogers said while the board does have multiple priorities within its budget, supporting classified staff members, including bus drivers, has been a topic of discussion for the board for a long time and is something he feels is important.
“We need to be discussing it and trying to figure out what can be done from a district point of view, to try to help fill as many of those vacancies as we can as possible,” Rogers said.