An Ocean State Transit bus, transporting students for Highlander Charter School, is seen turning onto Valley Street in Providence. (Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)
What color is a school bus?
“Believe or not…the true name for the school buses is ‘national chrome’,” said Walter Craddock, the administrator of the Rhode Island Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV), at a Monday meeting of a special legislative commission studying Rhode Island’s school bus system.
But appearances can be deceiving. Take the school bus driver shortage for Rhode Island’s statewide system, which is run by the state education department, and has been a topic of discussion at the commission’s previous meetings.
“On paper, there is no driver shortage,” Craddock said, noting there are about 150 more registered school bus drivers than there are school buses on the state’s roads. “The question is, ‘Where are they?’ Why are these individuals not stepping forward to drive these vehicles?’”
R.I. student transportation costs are bigger’n Dallas. A study commission can fix that.
Craddock posed the question to the members of the Special Joint Legislative Commission to Study Student Transportation Needs and System Costs. The commission’s long name and creation came out of 2024 legislation led by Sen. Linda Ujifusa, a Portsmouth Democrat, who co-chairs the commission alongside fellow Portsmouth Democrat Rep. Terri Cortvriend.
The commission first met in August and at Monday’s rendezvous, its fourth so far, commissioners continued their mission of pondering a more just statewide transit system regulating transport for students who attend private, religious, or career and technical schools outside their hometown.
A somewhat unintuitively structured system now contracts out bus work to private providers across a number of transportation regions defined by the state education department. Under the current scheme, some communities have incurred sizable costs, like Ujifusa’s Portsmouth, which spends about $80,000 yearly to transport two kids with disabilities to schools outside the district. Overall, the system cost about $146 million statewide in fiscal year 2023.
There are 1,983 active school vehicles, Craddock said, a number which includes traditional buses and “pupil transportation vehicles,” which are basically vans that can transport up to seven students. There are over 2,100 certificate holders for both types of vehicles combined.
“CDL [Commercially licensed] drivers can make a lot more than school bus drivers and they are having problems getting qualified drivers on the road,” Craddock said. “How are we going to incentivize these individuals who have the school bus certificates…How are gonna get them back behind the wheel?”
Craddock had no immediate answer, but he did offer up the intricacies of what it takes to be a school bus driver in Rhode Island: A specific class of commercial driving license, a school bus certificate (also known as a “white card”), background checks, and 10 hours of operator training, usually taken at the Community College of Rhode Island. There are also annual requirements for a physical exam and further training.
Rhode Island’s safety requirements for school buses are stricter than neighboring Massachusetts and Connecticut. Both of those states, for example, require a shorter distance for a bus driver to turn on the amber safety lights to notify drivers. Different requirements across state borders offer an additional challenge in recruiting out-of-state drivers, Craddock said.
A sight well-known among Rhode Island motorists is that of school bus monitors, who have to exit the bus, bend down, look underneath the vehicle, and then get back on board before traffic can resume. The slight delay can irritate morning and afternoon commuters, but Craddock said there is good reason for these robust safety requirements.
“Between 1979 and 1986 there was at least one school bus fatality every year,” Craddock said. In 1985 and 1986, a series of three fatalities over 18 months led to the legislation that created the bus monitor system.
There have been attempts to ax or modify the monitor system, like proposals in 2009 and 2011 that would have left the decision whether to have bus monitors in the hands of local school officials.
“We as a state should be proud we have not had a single fatality of a school bus passenger since 1986,” Craddock said.
Safety reasons aside, the reason why school bus drivers are not hitting the road is still unclear, and Craddock said one of the commission’s next steps should be surveying certificate holders to further understand the seeming disinterest.
Commissioners look to RIPTA successes for ideas
One state agency that has seen success with school transportation is the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA), which works with the Providence Public School Department to transport approximately 4,500 of the city’s high schoolers every month. Joining the commission Monday was RIPTA’s Christopher Durand, who was upgraded from interim to permanent CEO of the quasi-public agency in November.
Durand, who took over RIPTA in April 2024, explained in his presentation that the agency serves as the “state mobility manager,” meaning it is designed to “get people to where they want to go.”
That means sometimes pursuing nontraditional or novel means of public transit, something the agency has done with the recent introduction of services like Flex On Demand, essentially an alternative to rideshare services like Uber. Durand also described Wave to Work, which offers reduced cost bus passes for employees at participating companies, which can ultimately save companies money on payroll taxes.
Under Durand’s tenure, RIPTA has seen improvements in its workforce, largely thanks to a $4 boost in starting wages that helped the agency avoid planned service reductions and hire over 40 drivers, Durand said.
RIPTA’s collaboration with Providence schools has been fruitful: Providence teens seem to appreciate the bus passes, and the possibility of reduced RIPTA access for students became a point of contention during a recent budget battle between state education officials and city government.
“This partnership has been positive for RIPTA,” Durand said, and noted that students use the passes to get not only to school but to other activities that enrich their lives, like after school jobs, internships and extracurriculars.
Commissioner Emily Copeland, who represents the Rhode Island Association of School Committees, observed that RIPTA manages to transport students safely without a few of the requirements needed by the DMV.
But Durand cautioned the additional safety requirements for grade- and middle-schooler transportation, like flashing lights and stopping distance, do not exist with RIPTA buses. Federal laws also differ when it comes to the transportation of younger students, Durand said.
Finally, stipulations on the use of federal transit funds prevents public entities like RIPTA from providing exclusive school bus service, so any school service routes cannot exclude public ridership or harm private school bus operations.
Still, the RIPTA option is still worth investigating. Durand said the agency is reviewing opportunities with the state’s education department to see if service could extend to Davies Career and Technical High School, which accounts for 70% of students who receive bus service via the statewide contract system.
Commission members House Minority Leader Mike Chippendale of Foster and Sen. Jessica da la Cruz of North Smithfield, both Republicans, were absent from the meeting.
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