Student Transportation of America school buses in Duval County.
Published on August 2, 2023 at 4:29 pm
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Duval Schools has 49 vacancies for school bus drivers and is once again pleading with community members to apply. If the jobs aren’t filled by the time school starts Aug. 14, delays in bus pickups and drop-offs are likely.
“If anyone is interested in servicing our community and increasing the educational experience of our students, please, please, please apply to be a professional school bus driver,” Assistant Superintendent of Operations Erika Harding said Wednesday.
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The district has struggled to find enough school bus drivers at the start of the last few school years, with a similar number of vacancies last year. The district employs 671 drivers to transport 15,387 students who are registered for buses.
Something that’s new this year: an app for parents to track their kids’ buses in real time.
The district will roll out its partnership with the app Edulog later this fall. Students are getting new “smart” ID cards they’ll use to buy lunch, check out library books or laptops, and get on and off the bus. Students are supposed to tap when they get on, and parents can track their bus ride in real time in the app.
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The district says the app is not ready yet, but parents should sign up their kids for transportation through their parent account. They’ll be notified when the app starts working in Duval Schools.
The district signed a $1.7 million dollar contract with Edulog last fall, with an annual renewal cost of $860,000.
Duval Schools has grappled with the growing cost of busing, both as the geographically largest county in Florida, and because the district provides free countywide transportation to magnet schools. The district is rethinking the latter in the long run and trying to fill its driver vacancies now.
The district also has 258 teacher vacancies, roughly half as many as the total vacancies the same time last year.
More back-to-school changes
- The district is implementing new security measures, including weapons detectors in every high school. The district piloted the new student scanners, which use radio waves instead of metal detectors, in Riverside High School last school year and set them up in the rest of the district’s high schools over the summer. Teachers will have a new “smart button” badge they can press in an emergency to call police and share their location.
- Children from three elementary schools will all be in the same, brand-new school this fall. Students from Henry F. Kite, Martin Luther King Jr. and the former Rutledge H. Pearson will start at the brand-new Rutledge Pearson elementary school, funded by the voter-approved half-cent sales tax.
- The district will continue to serve free breakfast and lunch to all students when school starts, as it did during the COVID-19 pandemic. The district is part of federal program providing funding for free meals, even after pandemic waivers expired.
School starts Aug. 14 in Duval County. Enrollment and transportation information is on the district’s website.
