Orange County/School Buses

I spoke with Al Terry yesterday about the bus situation with the Orange Public School Buses. Wouldn't you know that this man is already on the job. One problem with school bus drivers is that the hours are limited, the pay is lower than other driving jobs, and there is no summer employment.

Al is working with the school bus scheduler to create positions for drivers to work with the schools and with OPT. They would either:

1. Drive school buses in the morning, then for OPT the rest of the day. Or,
2. drive for OPT in the morning and then school buses in the afternoon.

I believe the total so far is around 8 part-time and full-time positions that will be scheduled to allow for this change-over. A large enough group of folks doing this would solve the crisis that Orange Schools faced this year. Of course, hiring a year-round recruiter to make sure they have enough drivers would work as well.

One problem with this that Al mentioned, is that school bus and OPT drivers are required to have different types of licenses. The cost of those two is almost $200 if I remember correctly. That is not insignificant to someone from a low-income family looking for a new job.