Osceola School District determined to find school bus drivers
Summer is almost here for students, yet school districts are still continuing to fill jobs, and lots of them.
Osceola Schools has been looking for school bus drivers since last summer
Now, they are not just looking for applicants for the rest of this school year but for the next one as well.
The district is covered this year with getting all students to school that ride a bus. However, if someone calls out sick or there’s some type of absence, that’s when things can get iffy and why the district needs more drivers.
At the fair on Wednesday Kissimmee resident Adam Mejia was among the applicants.
For the past two-plus years Adam has tried to make it in the music industry. Creating beats and trying to sell them online.”
“That’s the passion right there,” Adam says playing one of his beats on his cell phone. “If I could pay the bills I would rather be making beats.”
The beatmaker is not trying to be a music teacher. Instead, he’s applying for work that takes him on a whole new future track in life.
“I was always interested in trucking in general,” Adam explains. “I know it is not exactly trucking but it seems like a good way to get my foot in the door.”
Since the school year began, the Osceola County School District has had a clear message for the public: to bring in more drivers.
“There are 227 routes that run through the county picking up kids and we only have 216 drivers,” Zach Downs with the Osceola County School District Department of Transportation says. “We are in a pretty good spot right now because we only need 16 to 17 more drivers, where at the beginning of the year we needed 40.”
This is now the eighth job fair since August, the school district is trying to find applicants like Adam.
“If this seems like a good opportunity and has room to grow, then I can see myself being here for five years,” Adam says.
Before the school year began, the district upped its minimum wage to $15 an hour, up from $13.80. After further negotiations, the starting wage is now $16.50 an hour.
Adam’s next stop after Wednesday’s interview is to find a place to get a DOT physical which is required to drive a commercial motor vehicle.
Job fairs like this are ideal for the district to hopefully get a head start for hirings next school year. With the state possibly moving high school start times to later in the morning that would cause a need for more drivers, but the district tells me they are just monitoring that situation until something becomes official.