School bus contractors call for higher pay, expanded benefits

School bus drivers want higher pay, expanded benefits and discipline for unruly behavior on the bus. (Unsplash)

Companies that provide Delaware school bus drivers want the state to raise school bus driver pay to $25 an hour.

They also want the state to pay more for insurance for buses below the C&D Canal and expand benefits to mechanics, backup drivers and office staff.

Those requests were from Gerald Dutton, president of the Delaware School Bus Contractors Association came Wednesday at the Public School Transportation Committee meeting.

If a driver worked 40 hours at the $25 an hour rate, it would equal $52,000 a year. 

The committee decided to wait until March to make final recommendations to the General Assembly’s Joint Finance Committee, which is meeting this month to hear requests for the 2024 state budget. It starts July 1.

Dutton’s request for a pay raise follows the state hiking bus driver pay to $21 an hour last year, partly to help school districts attract more drivers amid a nationwide shortage.

Drivers aren’t the only ones who need attention, Dutton said.

“We had to look at everything that’s associated with that bus, anybody that’s associated to it, your office staff, mechanics,” Dutton said.

If there’s health, vision or dental benefits for one group of workers, there needs to be those same benefits for all that help buses operate smoothly, Dutton argued. 

He also said the key to attracting workers is the pay.

No one will enter the field solely based on benefits, he said.

Many districts offer bus drivers additional work in the school, perhaps with food services, to help them reach six hours a day. That is the cutoff to earn state retirement and other benefits. ‘

It was unclear how raising driver pay to $25 an hour would affect those arrangements.

Delaware continues to have a bus driver shortage.

Kim Klein, who works in operational support for the Department of Education, said three things  are pushing the recruitment and retention of bus drivers: salary, benefits and appropriate discipline of students on the road.

Dutton pointed out that school safety concerns don’t end in buildings.

He also asked for the committee to ask the JFC for mandatory safety features such as seat belts and fire suppression systems to assist in the evacuation of students on the bus in case of an emergency. 

The average insurance this year for a bus is $3,031.44 south of the canal, but the state funds $2,104 per bus. The contractors group wants the $927.44 gap to be filled. 

The Public School Transportation Committee will meet Thursday, March 16 at 10 a.m. Watch it here.  

Jarek Rutz

Raised in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, Jarek earned a B.A. in journalism and a B.A. in political science from Temple University in 2021. After running CNN’s Michael Smerconish’s YouTube channel, Jarek became a reporter for the Bucks County Herald before joining Delaware LIVE News.

Jarek can be reached by email at [email protected] or by phone at (215) 450-9982. Follow him on Twitter @jarekrutz