How St. Louis parents are dealing with school bus driver shortages

St. Louis Public School District is experiencing a bus driver shortage.

Bus drivers have increased since pandemic lows, but employment has not fully recovered.

School bus workers tend to be older and paid less than the average worker, EPI says.

A survey shows 92 percent of school transportation and administration leaders report having operations constrained by bus driver shortages.

Nearly half of St. Louis Public Schools' students are chronically absent, a former superintendent said in June .

The district switched from cabs to buses for the first week of school, a principal said.

Amanda Doyle , who has two children in the district, decided to mostly pull her kids out of the transportation system.

Doyle 's son is still able to ride the bus for band, but she prefers to drive both kids back and forth.

“On both ends, I think that grace needs to be given more,” says Martina Parker .

“My hope is just that people will have a little bit more understanding to the different things that go into getting our kids to school every day and hoping that they show up back at home just as healthy and safe as they did when the left us,’ she said.