Guest Post: Meeting the School Bus Driver Shortage During COVID

Prof. Howard Weiss shares his OM insights with us monthly.

Massachusetts has just announced that the Massachusetts National Guard has been activated to help with the state’s shortage of school bus drivers. Up to 250 members will be available to cities and towns.

The COVID crisis has left many school districts short of employees, including bus drivers. Obviously, getting students to their schools is critical. Chapter 13, the Aggregate Planning chapter in your Heizer/Render/Munson textbook, suggests 5 ways that capacity issues might be addressed.

1. Use inventory.
2. Vary the size of the workforce
3. Use part-timers or overtime
4. Use subcontractors
5. Change prices to influence demand.

Massachusetts has come up with an ingenious combination of increasing the size of the work force and using subcontractors by using the National Guard. The major stumbling block is that the national guard members must be trained and licensed to drive school busses. Currently, 90 members have the proper license and the rest will be trained. For Massachusetts, the best part of this implementation is that the cost will be reimbursed by the federal government since it is a COVID-related issue.

Philadelphia has taken a different approach of reducing demand by using parents as part-timers. The school district will now pay families $300 a month ($3,000 for the school year) if they opt-out of transportation services.

Classroom discussion questions:

1. What school districts or states currently have school bus driver shortages? Does your home school district have a shortage? 
2. What other option does a school have if it is short of drivers?