The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education met Tuesday and unanimously approved the highest pay rate in the Triangle for bus drivers -- which is now $20 an hour.
The board unanimously voted to raise bus driver pay, which will be going into effect next school year.
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Today, we'll learn more about how the district is addressing ongoing school bus issues.
The board also recommended changes to the elementary bell schedule, and magnet school transportation. They’ll hold public hearings first.
According to the school district, each day the transportation department begins the day with 15 uncovered routes. These routes are covered by double runs or by substitute drivers and licensed office staff.
On Tuesday morning, four bus routes did not have a driver due to the ongoing driver shortage.
For the past several weeks, the school district has surveyed staffers and people in the community to help find solutions.
"Our community knows that something has to change," said Andy Jenks, a spokesperson for the school district. "We know that something has to change, but before doing that, we wanted to get as good a sense as possible from our employees and our community about what would they support? What would they not support and maybe what the middle ground is."
More than 1,000 suggestions in the 41-paged survey results given were about raising driver pay and increasing incentives and benefits.
"Our first recommendation is to be as disruptive as we can in the compensation market for our bus drivers and increase the pay for new drivers to $20 an hour, which is a substantial raise from where our new drivers are now and would lead the market in terms of new bus driver pay," Jenks said.
The first recommendation involves immediately raising the minimum new bus driver pay from $16.62 an hour to $20.
This would be higher than Wake County schools at $17.20 and Durham’s starting pay at $18.13.
Currently-employed drivers would receive a three-step increase in July. This recommendation also includes consolidated bus stops, dual roles that combine bus driving with other positions and partnering with Chapel Hill and Carrboro on improved biking and walking options.
The second recommendation involves implementing a bell-schedule change that would split elementary schools into two tiers so that the same number of buses can cover more schools each day.
The third recommendation involves changes to magnet program bus transportation.
"We may come off to others as a small school district, but to us it's still a big community out there with a lot of diverse opinions and a lot of diverse needs and we're trying to be as receptive and empathetic to all of those needs as we can," Jenks said.
"It seems as though there's an appetite to compensate our drivers in a way that leads the regional market," he said. "I think it's a little bit more toward 50/50 In terms of the change to bell schedules and the school start times particularly at the elementary level. And then there's I think more diversification of opinion when it comes to our magnet school transportation."
CHCCS Transportation department said the vacancy rate is about 45%, which accounts for "true" vacancies (a position that is unfilled).
WRAL News reached out to Wake County Public Schools and Durham Public Schools to get an update on their vacancies.
WCPSS currently has 288 vacant positions for a vacancy rate of 32.69%. At the end of winter break, the district had 284 vacant positions.
DPS did not respond.