Right now, in the Wentzville School District, there is a staff shortage of bus drivers and other employees in the transportation department.

Director of transportation  Kimberly Boix said the employees the transportation department currently needs most are “bus drivers and… a driver trainer [and]aids on the buses [to] help students with special needs.” There is a national bus driver shortage as well she said. 

“There’s quite a few problems that will come up when we’re short drivers. We’re even shorter when a driver is either absent, because of an illness or sickness or if they take off time, so that means a further shortage of drivers within the district,” Boix said. 

The shortage affects students and parents.

“As a district and as a whole it affects the students the most and then also the parents because parents don’t want their student missing school time so they either transport their students to school the main impact is when the buses are late, losing time at school,” Boix said.

Boix said an important thing in hiring new staff is that WSD transportation is competitive with the rate of pay that they pay their drivers and their aids.

“To be creative and to be creative on a daily basis we can come into our office with maybe 15 to 20 drivers that call off and we have to be creative on how to get every single one of our 10,000 students to school and we transport 10,000 students a day,”Boix said.