Something I haven’t seen in the comments but is very important to the equation… Louisville has a very messed up bussing situation and has for years.
I’m not SUPER aware of the details, but that’s because I live on the southern Indiana side of the river (just miles away from Louisville). My wife moved over here years ago specifically to avoid this issue for her kid before he was in the school system.
Louisville has a long standing policy where there is some sort of lottery that chooses what school you go to, rather than your school being determined by your nearest available.
The idea was clearly based on good intentions… to ensure that kids from any neighborhood would have the same opportunities, etc etc.
However, in reality it is a nightmare. Louisville isn’t the largest metro area or the most sprawling, but still, trying to bus students from every school to every part of the county is ridiculous.
I think they made some changes in the past few years to make it easier to get a closer school, but again I’m not super up to date on it because it doesn’t affect me other than the bus routes being an issue every year and hearing about it on the local news.
It’s gotten worse and worse over the years though.
Again, I’m sure there are much more informed people with better info on this out there, but until they jump in I figured I’d add some pertinent info since this isn’t a local lemmy community.
Maybe they should buy a second bus. Or maybe even a third…
There are hundreds of administrators in this school district making six figures. The main administrator makes 300k+ if we didn’t have enough drivers these tax payer funded jerkoffs could’ve been out driving these buses and getting these kids home safely. JCPS likes to waste money year in and year out and every single year they do something embarrassing. This one was top tier embarrassing.
Even after increasing pay
Hmm, so what did they increase it to? Oh look only $20.65/hour., and I’ve heard of some school districts only paying during the driving meaning you show up for work early AM to pick up your bus as a driver and start being paid. You pick up and drop off kids for your routes. Now its maybe 9am. No more pay for you until you go back to the school and pick kids up again to take them home at maybe 2pm. I don’t know if this district does this, BTW.
$20.65/hour is way WAY too low for a job with lots of unpaid hours in the middle of the shift, and having to be responsible and deal with kids that can’t behave enough on a school bus.
Unless the bus company let me drive somewhere else since I’m not being paid then I’d be filing wage complaints with the state department of labor…
From experience, there is nothing preventing you from leaving, except that anything you do has to be close enough to the bus lot and meticulously scheduled to allow for you to drive from the bus lot to where you need to be and back while also allowing any prep time, especially if you need to pretrip your bus.
In other words, in theory, you can do whatever you want. In practice, you’re straight up tethered to that lot. I worked out my actual pay last year. I made $22/hrs working for a major national transportation service. My average paid time was about 6.5 hours. My layover time was two separate segments. I had 2.5 hours of driving in the AM, about 1.5 in the late AM, and another 2.5 in the PM. These were separate by 2 hours, and then 2.5 hours. So, the reality of this schedule meant that I couldn’t do much of anything on my downtime. I was obligated to 11 hours, only 6.5 of which I was paid. So, the reality was that I was making $13/hr. That math convinced me not to return this year. That, and my shit benefits caused me to get a $1,400 lab bill for work that was only $45 on my previous insurance. They screw you. They screw you coming, they screw you going, and anything that goes wrong is always your fault, while they’re quick to take credit when things go well.
It ain’t worth it.
OMG I’d be so pissed. Like, I’d weather just pick them up myself, or track the bus down and pull them off of it.
For a time, I lived an hour from my school. Caught the bus at about 530am, and got home at like 5ish. Very rural area in the Mojave desert. But this is just so bad.
