Washougal School District finds solutions to substitute bus driver shortage, weather challenges

David Tsao couldn’t pass up an opportunity to do some good-natured recruiting in the middle of providing an update about the Washougal School District’s (WSD) transportation department during a Washougal School Board meeting on Oct. 8

“Any of you that are interested (in becoming a substitute bus driver), just go for it,” Tsao, the district’s transportation director, told interim Superintendent Aaron Hansen and Washougal School Board members. “The very first thing we teach you is how to back up a bus. Once you get that much figured out, there’s nothing else that’s going to be that tough. Mr. Hansen here has indicated his interest in wanting to be able to have that license, although I haven’t seen too much movement in that direction.”

The district’s transportation department has had a smooth start to the 2024-25 school year, despite staffing- and weather-related challenges, Tsao said.

“It is, every single day, a puzzle to put together to try to make sure that we cover everything (to take care of) everybody’s needs,” he said. “So far (this school year), we have not had to say ‘No’ to anybody yet. We’ve been able to cover all the athletics, we’ve been able to cover all the field trips, and we haven’t left any students at home or at school not being able to transport. … This has been easily the easiest, smoothest start that we’ve had to a school year.”

Tsao said that the biggest challenge he’s faced since being hired in 2021 has been the “staffing and lack of drivers.”

“When I first arrived here, we were short of fulfilling all of our regular routes,” he said. “In other words, we didn’t even have substitutes to cover those (routes), so mechanics drove, dispatchers drove, I drove. A lot of people filled in to drive.”

Tsao said that every one of his department’s 38 employees, including the non-drivers, has a Class-B commercial drivers license. Of his 32 full-time drivers, 25 are “regular” drivers, meaning “they have a regular morning (route) and a regular afternoon route” and 50% are new to the district within the last several years.

“But the good news is that we don’t tend to have a lot of attrition,” he said. “There’s usually a couple people that might be thinking about retirement or (leave) because of medical issues or whatever, and fortunately, we have enough substitutes at this particular juncture who want regular routes anyway, and we’re able to give that to them.”

The district currently has seven substitute bus drivers.

“There’s a couple or three that are just emergency-type, part-time substitutes, but we still need them,” Tsao said, adding that the district is always looking for additional substitute drivers because it tends to lose substitutes to full-time jobs in other districts once they’re trained, a process that involves 100 hours of classroom instruction, driving and knowledge tests.

“It’s hard to hang onto the substitutes because once they get their credentials, they can go anywhere in the state and work, so we have to create an environment where they want to be here,” Tsao said. “Most of our people have come from the Washougal area, and so they want to stay here, where they have family or kids in the system or whatever it happens to be. But we have lost a couple or three drivers to Camas and then another driver to Vancouver, only because they have open regular routes available for substitutes to take whereas we currently don’t have that.”

One of the main challenges to finding new substitutes, Tsao said, is that the district doesn’t “have a huge market here for recruitment.”

“Typically, (a bus driver is) retired, but not really quite ready to retire, and they want to do something,” he said. “The other demographic is parents (with) kids that are now old enough to go to school, and now (the parents) have some time and they want their schedules to match with their kids’ schedules. Those are the two major areas that we are able to recruit from.”

A sign with the words “Drivers Wanted” hangs from a bus parked in front of the district’s bus garage on “E” Street.

“You guys have probably seen the bus at the old bus barn with the signage,” Tsao said. “We have gone to a couple of job fairs, but they’re not really productive, to be honest with you. The signage is important for people to know that we’re looking for drivers, and word of mouth is probably as (important) as anything else.”

Department deals with ‘dramatically different’ weather

The district has modified some of its bus routes to increase efficiency and improve its transportation efforts in snowy and icy weather.

“We used to have two buses, one from (the Cape Horn-Skye Elementary School-Canyon Creek Middle School campus) and one from the high school, going up to Dougan falls, which takes 30 minutes, taking less than 10 kids up there between two schools,” Tsao said. “We just made a change where we held the kids at the school for about 10 extra minutes. The high school bus comes up, picks those guys up, and then that bus goes up to Dougan.

“The bus that used to go up to Dougan is now doing something else and spreading the load out a little bit more so that we can get to all the stops a little bit quicker. There’ve been a couple of creative things that we’ve done (like that) that’ve made it a little bit better. It’s still a challenge for those kids up there. An hour is really a long time to be on a bus.”

Tsao said that the district “transports a higher percentage of students to schools than most districts in Washington state.”

The school district’s “unique geography” impacts the district’s transportation efforts in other ways, according to Tsao.

“We have one school that’s quite far out, and upriver, there’s a lot of distance all the way into Skamania County,” Tsao said. “Given that, the amount of time a student is on a bus becomes a factor as well. Even though we may only have five kids on Maybee Mine (Road) or five kids up in Dougan Falls, if we have a bus that goes to all of these places, (those kids would) be on the bus for two, two-and-a-half hours. That just doesn’t work.”

Tsao noted that he worked with former WSD Superintendent Mary Templeton to adjust the district’s snow routes for the 2023-24 school year in an effort to cut down on the amount of snow days the district has to take.

The district placed four potential inclement weather make-up days on its 2024-25 calendar, fewer than previous years.

“One of the changes we made was that we’re no longer going to drive the upper elevations of Skye Road for snow rounds,” he said. “It is dramatically different at the top of Skye than it is out on River Road. What we’re saying is that those 200, 250 students impacted shouldn’t be impacting the other 2,500 or 3,000 students.”

The district also decided to have its buses travel mostly below 500-foot elevations, and “therefore we’re able to have schools open maybe a little bit more than previous years,” according to Tsao.

“Hopefully what happens with this change is that we’re able to maybe have a couple more late-start days, which still counts as a school day, versus having a snow day because we can’t take a bus to get to go up to Skye Road and so forth,” he added.

Washougal parents have lodged numerous complaints during the past several years about the number of snow days that the district has been taking, noting the sometimes-drastic difference in weather between the areas of the “upriver” schools and the lower-elevation schools.

“I didn’t realize that I had to be a meteorologist as well when they told me about this job. I mean, we have two distinct weather patterns,” Tsao said. “What happens down here at 400 or 500 feet, near sea level, and what happens at 1,500 feet is dramatically different as we get into November, December, into the winter year. It is a significant issue for our region because Vancouver doesn’t deal with it and Camas really doesn’t have quite as much weather as we do here. It’s all related to the west side of the (Columbia River) Gorge, which can be really difficult to deal with, whereas down here, we’re typically in pretty good shape. If you’re a parent down here and you’re seeing rain, and you say, ‘What the heck is going on? Why don’t we have school today?’ I’m sure that question has come up once or twice.”

Washougal School Board member Jane Long, who represents the “upriver” community’s District 2, lauded Tsao’s efforts.

“I know the routes out of Cape (Horn-Skye Elementary School and Canyon Creek Middle School) are tough,” Long said. “I’ve heard from a few parents that their route times have gone down this year. I don’t know what magic you’re working to make that happen for them, but it’s appreciated.”

Hansen also stated his admiration for Tsao’s work.

“I’ve appreciated David’s work, his experience, his dedication to this district and to transportation,” Hansen said. “He understands the regulations. He does a really good job training. He’s done a great job.”