Lack of drivers resulting in school bus route cancellations in Annapolis Valley

Some parents throughout the area served by the Annapolis Valley Regional Centre for Education are upset by the increasing number of days that buses are not available to take their children to school.

Some routes in Centreville, Kings County that go to Northeast Kings Education Centre have already been cancelled 14 times or more this school year because of a lack of drivers.

In the Three Mile Plains area of Hants County there have been half a dozen  cancellations so far.

Jodi Bishop of Lakeville said the bus that takes her children to Central Kings Rural High School was cancelled three days in a row last week.

“I’m trying not to be irate and go through all the right steps, but no one is listening to us,” she said.

Bishop said that after not coming last Wednesday to Friday they had been expecting the bus Monday, but it didn’t show up on schedule because the new driver got lost somewhere on the route.

“I heard through sources at the school that the driver has left because he got another job and gave them plenty of notice so they knew he was leaving, but they haven’t filled the position.”

She said that when she spoke to someone at the AVRCE office last week, she was told “the plan was that they were going to try to stagger the routes so that not every day would have the same route cancelled so that students wouldn’t be three days without going to school if they didn’t have other transportation,” Bishop said. 

“But they didn’t do that.”

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That solution isn’t a good one in any case, Bishop said, “especially with the policy that if students miss too much time of a course they can be removed from the course and fail.”

When Bishop went to the school Monday because she couldn’t reach anyone on the phone, “they said they’re getting overloaded with calls from people. I said I understand that, but they have to start answering people. This is why people are getting pissed and going to social media and posting because they’re not getting answers.”

She said if she or her husband have to stay home to take her children to school, they lose time and money from work.

“I feel bad for some students because some parents can’t afford the gas to get them to school, or they have jobs where they can’t be late.”

Spokeswoman Kristen Loyst said in an email that the AVRCE’s bus service and its contracted bus company, which covers eastern and central Kings County, are experiencing a staffing shortage.

“In particular, we have a shortage of spare bus drivers who cover routes when regular drivers are away due to illness or scheduled leave for appointments. We also have vacancies in permanent bus driver positions,” Loyst wrote.

“We are advertising available bus driver positions on radio, social media, streaming platforms, and websites, which has increased the number of applications we are receiving. We are getting new drivers trained and on the road as quickly as possible. Our contracted busing provider is also advertising bus driver positions and working to onboard new drivers as quickly as they can.”

In the meantime, she said, all staff with the appropriate qualifications are helping cover bus routes, and “we are also reconfiguring routes and having drivers cover additional routes whenever possible. We never want to be in a position where it is necessary to cancel a bus route, and only do so when we have exhausted all other options.”

Loyst said that, on average, AVRCE has cancelled about eight buses per day over the past two weeks because of staffing shortages, some of which cover multiple schools. Five were cancelled Monday, and three Tuesday.

“We are optimistic that numbers will continue to trend in the right direction, and we will continue to see more applications to join our team,” she said.