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WAILUKU – Since the beginning of the school year, Paulo Lat has been dropping his son off at the Queen Kaahumanu Center, where he and the other students commuting to Lahainaluna would ride the local public transportation for hours each day.
"When I would pick them up from Queen Kaahumanu, they were so tired. They would leave at 6 a.m. for school and wouldn't get home for hours," he said.
Since the school year began on Aug. 5, Lat and other parents have struggled with finding adequate, safe and efficient transportation for their children. And while representatives from the Hawai'i State Department of Education say they are doing their best to find solutions to help support the island and nationwide issue of shortage of bus drivers, some parents are saying help is needed sooner than later.
"With everything that has happened with trauma, moving and losing our homes, they should be prioritized," Lat said of the commuting Lahainaluna students.
Recently the state DOE reinstated 11 bus routes on Maui and 63 routes throughout the state, including a route to Maui's west side that started on Aug. 26. Prior to the decision, Lat's son was commuting on the public bus system, which he and other parents said brought up numerous concerns. Their concerns ranged from exposing the children to homelessness, and drug abuse, to suffering from exhaustion after the long bus rides each morning and afternoon.
He's also concerned about the children getting to school on time, since they often have to transfer buses at the Lahaina Cannery Mall to the high school resulting in tardiness.
Sometimes the students miss the connecting bus on their way home, and have to wait over an hour to return, he said.
"There's only one bus at that time, going from the Lahaina Cannery Mall to home, and if they didn't get on it then they would have to wait another 90 minutes for another bus," he explained.
Lat added, "I don't think this is safe for kids to get to and from school. Please come up with a solution," Lat told The Maui News in an email.
And while the additional route is helping, he said there are still some issues left to be resolved.
"The only issue is that kids still need to wait an hour after school because the bus leaves at 2:50 p.m.," he said.
He said last year the students were able to ride straight to Lahainaluna, without all the stops in between.
He hopes more can be done to support Maui's school bus riders, and he's not alone.
Gloria Madden, a mother of a teenager who travels from Haiku to King Kekaulike High School in upcountry Maui each day, said she's still "in the same situation" despite the additional bus routes.
"I take my kid to school every day. I can't follow the whole bus thing. It's so hard to follow," she said.
Madden said it takes her at least an hour to an hour and 15 minutes because the road is congested.
"You get caught in the Makawao four-corner and it's super bad, and then again you get caught going to Kalama and then get caught again going to King Kekaulike," she said.
She said the problem has been escalating during the past three years, and it's not getting better. From giving parents too short of notice of bus changes, to not having an effective communication system, she says the situation is "a systematic failure."
Her solution, she said, is to pay bus drivers more and recruit.
"Give bus drivers respect. Just overall, creating a better genre for their line of work and how important they are," Madden said. "A bus driver is a very important person in a kid's life. It's the first person they see and the last person they see at the end of the school day."
Randolph Moore, interim deputy superintendent of operations at the state DOE, said the problem is not simple, but simple to understand.
"The problem isn't a shortage of buses, the problem is a shortage of drivers, which is a national phenomenon," Moore said.
Moores continued, "Point number one, is these are not our drivers, not our buses; the problem is not a shortage of buses but a shortage of drivers that don't work for us anyway."
On Maui, there are multiple contractors that the state DOE works with to provide public school transportation, that includes Roberts Hawai'i and Ground Transport Inc. Bus contractor Ground Transport Inc. also secured additional drivers and buses by subcontracting with Polynesian Adventure Tours, leveraging the governor's emergency proclamation, according to HIDOE.
Moore said the contractors are also experiencing a lack of interest in the position, since driving buses is a "split-shift job."
"You come to work early in the morning, drive a couple hours, park your bus. Come back in the afternoon, drive for a couple of hours, and park the bus. You don't get paid for that time in the middle of the day and you don't earn enough money because the hours aren't there," he said.
He also said bus drivers need their Commercial Driver's License (CDL) and endorsements, which often attracts drivers to higher-paying opportunities.
"Would you rather drive a school bus and get a lot of lip or drive a tour bus and get a lot of tips?" he said.
Moore said that the state DOE is addressing the issue during meetings, and recently received an emergency proclamation from the Gov. Josh Green, that allowed the state DOE to start contracting tour bus companies to assist with bringing children to school. They also solidified seven-year contracts with bus companies on July 1.
According to a statement from HIDOE, the governor's emergency proclamation temporarily relaxes rules around the types of vehicles that can be used to safely transport students to and from school, and regulations around the required driver certifications. It also suspends the state's procurement rules which allowed the Department to quickly contract with other companies for services, including tour bus companies.
Moore said along with the proclamation, they are continuing to tackle the issue.
"We are going to get through this year's problem, but that doesn't solve next year, or the year after or year after. So what we're looking at is what do we need to do in the next several months or several years so that we can better prepare for and respond to this long-term secular decline in the number of bus drivers?" he said.
He also said since the resolution effort is being contracted to separate companies, it is up to them to recruit and advertise for more bus drivers.
When asked whether or not the state DOE would look into buying their own buses and hiring their own school bus drivers, he said the issue still circles back to the shortage of qualified applicants.
"If there aren't enough bus drivers in the state, we wouldn't be able to hire them any easier than the bus companies," he said.
A statement from a HIDOE representative sent on Fri., Aug. 30, said the Department has "reached out to mainland bus operators, tour bus operators, the National Guard, and firefighters, among others, to help recruit qualified bus drivers. The statement also said "bus service contractors are continuing to offer hiring bonuses, pay incentives and increased benefits to attract and recruit new drivers."
Moore said he hopes to see more drivers with CDL licenses feel compelled to help, and that the public continues to take proactive measures.
"We understand the problem – not enough drivers. We can have our retired uncle with the CDL sign up, we can carpool to get to school that way, and we can walk our kids to the county bus stop and wait with them there so they feel safe to ride the county bus," he said.