EDMONTON -- School bus drivers from across the country say they’re debating getting back behind the wheel in the fall, citing a lack of protection and conflicting guidelines within the education system amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite each province releasing guidelines for the reopening of schools in September, school bus drivers who spoke with CTV News say they have been “forgotten” by the education system, with murky plans for how physical distancing will be implemented and mixed messages about safety precautions.
“When children are loading, and unloading, we are extremely close to them—half the time we get hit with backpacks,” Michelle Lavallee, a bus driver in Ontario’s Durham Region, told CTVNews.ca by phone Friday.
“What would happen if something were to happen to me with my own kids? I’m scared of bringing it home to my husband or to my own children. Where is the protection for us drivers?”
Lavallee says that while many provinces plan to group children into cohorts to accommodate physical distancing and easier contact tracing, there has been little guidance about how cohorting will work on buses.
In Ontario, officials encourage that students be assigned seats on buses, with students from the same home or class seated together. But full-size school buses typically transport up to 70 students of all age groups.
Drivers like Lavallee say they haven’t been told whether they will be transporting less children to accommodate physical distancing or who will be responsible for cleaning buses in between routes, leaving drivers in the dark just weeks before the start of the school year.
“As of right now I don’t know [if I will go back to work]. I can’t answer that because I don’t know what we’re going back to,” the 14-year veteran driver said.
In Manitoba, provincial guidelines recommend only one student per seat on buses, unless they’re sitting with someone from their own home or in-school cohort, presenting unique challenges for organizing bus routes for students in rural areas.
“It’s not feasible to just go out and pick up that cohort because that grade could live in a huge geographical area, especially in a rural division," Alan Campbell, president of the Manitoba School Boards Association, told CTV Winnipeg.
Elsewhere in the province, school divisions will be forced to drastically reduce ridership, giving priority to students with special needs.
A retired school bus driver from the Saskatoon area also expressed concerns about returning to work, noting that there isn’t enough time to sanitize properly between pickups, especially when servicing multiple school routes per shift.
Unions that represent bus drivers worry that not enough is being done to protect drivers, especially in a system that relies on retirees or those over the age of 60.
“The school bus transportation system has been built on a model of recruiting retirees,” Debbie Montgomery, president of Unifor Local 4268, Ontario's leading school bus driver union, told CTVNews.ca by phone.
“Sixty per cent of people providing transportation for children are at an age that public health has said is vulnerable just by virtue of their age.”
Montgomery notes that unlike public transportation buses, school bus drivers will not be separated by Plexiglas barriers.
“Drivers are sitting ducks. We cannot move once we’re in that seat,” said Montgomery. “We’re wondering why our safety at work doesn’t mean as much as anyone else’s.”
Montgomery says drivers require clear answers about their concerns before they can make an informed decision about going back to work.
“How do drivers make an educated decision? We’re in the midst of a pandemic, we don’t have enough information, nobody is answering our questions… how do they determine whether or not they can be safe at work,” she said, noting there is just three weeks left until the school year begins.
“If we don’t get some pretty straight answers and quickly there is going to be a big problem... you’re not going to have enough people to drive a school bus. I guarantee that.”
Quebec union president Caroline Laplante agrees that measures unveiled by the province's education minister do little to address concerns voiced by bus drivers, noting that many drivers have already threatened to quit.
“I’m worried and everyone I represent is worried," Laplante told CTV Montreal.
“We’re being told we can accept between 44 and 48 children on the bus -- it changes all the time,” Laplante said.
Quebec’s provincial guidelines state that there should be no more than two students per bench, with a maximum of 48 students per bus.
The guidelines do not include specific rules for school bus drivers, other than a recommendation that drivers be protected by a plexiglass barrier.
