The coronavirus pandemic has put extra pressure on the schools’ skeleton crew of bus drivers this year. If one driver has to quarantine after coming into contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19, that gap in the bus routes still needs to be filled.

At these districts, when quarantines happen, substitute drivers — or anyone licensed to drive — are pitching in to get the job done every day.

“If no one is out we can barely cover. If someone’s out, we’re all scrambling,” Saranac Lake Central School District Superintendent Diane Fox said.

The bus driver shortage has been getting worse for some time, but the problem has been exacerbated by the pandemic, she said. There were three transportation department workers out last week because of quarantines, Fox said. On one day, she drove a district van — which does not require a commercial drivers license — to bring students in the school district to the private Northwood School in Lake Placid.

Brett Giddings says hello to Saranac Lake Middle School students as they pile onto his bus after the bell on Tuesday. The district is facing a bus driver shortage, but Brett said it hasn’t affected him yet. Holley McCormick, left, looks on. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

Last week, Fox told the school board that if more than one driver is quarantined, they’d have to get creative. She said the district would ask parents to drive their children in if they can.

The Saranac Lake school district is the largest in the state, geographically. SLCSD Transportation Supervisor Lenny Barker said drivers put an average of 100 miles on each of the 15 buses every day as they travel the 650 square-mile district, going as far as Sugarbush, Meacham Lake, Saranac Inn, Ray Brook and Franklin Falls.

The SLCSD department has 14 full-time drivers, as well as two mechanics, two administrators and several substitute drivers. On Tuesday, a mechanic was driving one of the buses.

Tupper Lake Central School District Superintendent Russ Bartlett said his district was at its minimum “limit” of available drivers on Friday. He said if one more driver had to quarantine, the district wouldn’t go remote, but drivers would have to make extra runs and some kids would have to arrive late.

This is a bigger problem for L.P. Quinn Elementary School, he said.

Hayden Damour, a Saranac Lake Middle School student, climbs aboard Brett Giddings’ bus on Tuesday. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

Bartlett estimated that more than half of the district’s high school students walk to school. Others drive or are dropped off by parents. Elementary school bus routes take priority, he added, because it’s harder to have younger kids stay home longer.

“If a middle-high school student has to stay home alone for an extra 10 minutes it doesn’t really upset anybody’s schedule,” Bartlett said. “But if a first-grader or second-grader does, that could be the different between whether mom and dad get to work on time.”

Lake Placid Central School District Transportation Director Niki Coursen said her department is in good shape. She hired two new drivers in September.

“We’re considering ourselves very lucky,” she said.

A lack of bus drivers because of quarantines at other North Country schools has also led to local districts cancelling sports games. Driving athletes to away games stretches already thin staffing numbers even more, as games can be hours away.

“Our transportation department’s been awesome,” TLCSD Athletics Director Dan Brown said. “They’re working their hearts out and they’re doing anything they can to get kids to games.”

He said they’ve been flexible and he admires them for doing a tough job — driving around a big bus full of kids in traffic for long hours, all while making sure they keep their masks on and don’t horse around too much.

“I’m not trying to sound dramatic or anything, but we could not do it without them,” Brown said.

The bus driver shortage is a problem all over the state and the country.

“People are having to be mighty creative to solve problems these days,” Bartlett said.

“There’s always Uber,” district resident Gary Ceisner joked at a Saranac Lake school board meeting last week.

In larger U.S. cities, some parents have resorted to ride sharing apps to get their students to class and “Kid-Uber” companies are cropping up.

Fox said districts can contract driving work out, but drivers for students need passenger endorsement from the DMV.

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Hurdles to licenses

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Last month, Gov. Kathy Hochul told several state agencies to contact more than 550,000 New Yorkers with CDLs, seeing if they could drum up interest for bus driver positions.

Fox said the North Country list turned up three potential drivers in the area, but she said they’re not ready yet and it might take a while to get them approved.

Bus drivers need a class B commercial drivers license as well as a passenger endorsement, which means they’re approved to drive others around.

Barker said applicants to SLCSD need to drive to Malone for the closest Department of Motor Vehicle office to test at. He said it can take a couple of months for applicants to feel they’re qualified to take the test.

LPCSD Superintendent Timothy Seymour said applicants need a “sound mechanical understanding.”

“Passing the tests these days is so challenging you almost have to be a mechanic,” he said.

“You’re supposed to know the bus inside and out,” SLCSD bus driver Brett Giddings said.

Barker said drivers aren’t asked to do major mechanical work, but they have to know how the air brakes work and understand what’s under the hood. The DMV has been generous, giving do-over opportunities on the written test on the same day, so people don’t have to drive back out, he added.

Bartlett said some drivers are retired and just looking to supplement their monthly income, but they can’t always work full-time because there’s a limit on how much they can earn in a year to keep their retirement benefits.

Bartlett is asking the town and village governments for help finding new drivers, since they employ the majority of CDL-certified drivers in the area, aside from the logging industry.

Bus routes are hard to substitute for, because if someone takes a route they don’t know, they almost need someone else to help them through it, which defeats the purpose, he said.

Lake Placid’s latest hires applied in July and August and were accepted by the start and end of September, Coursen said.

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Bus driving joys

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On Tuesday, Giddings was all smiles as students from the Saranac Lake Middle School filed onto his bus. He’s been driving for four years and was driving the Bloomingdale route that day. He said the driver shortages have not affected his schedule, but it might if it gets worse.

He likes driving. The kids are fun, he has the middle of his day free for chores and relaxing, and he gets “all that time off.”

He said he got into driving because he saw the ads all the time and figured it’d be nice to learn a new skill.

Barker said SLCSD offers bus drivers a pay rate of $17.33 per hour.

Each district’s rate is different depending on its union.