Fairborn City Schools is short five drivers for the 38 bus routes it needs covered, a gap that has left families dealing with delayed and sometimes canceled pickups across the district. The shortage has become visible enough that supervisors and mechanics are now climbing behind the wheel themselves just to keep buses running.
The district currently has 33 drivers on staff, according to WHIO TV, which reported that Fairborn was responding directly to parents who said their kids' buses are often delayed and sometimes canceled because of the staffing gap. District officials told the station six to eight prospective drivers are currently going through the hiring process, though that pipeline isn't fast. Applicants without a commercial driver's license are looking at four to eight weeks before they can get behind the wheel, and the district requires 27 hours of classroom instruction and on-the-road training before anyone is cleared to drive.
Supervisors and Mechanics Fill the Gaps
In the meantime, Fairborn is leaning on staff who don't normally drive buses at all. The same report notes that district supervisors and mechanics have been stepping in to cover routes rather than leave students stranded. It's a stopgap measure, not a fix, but it reflects a broader pattern seen elsewhere in Ohio, where survey respondents told the Dayton Daily News that transportation supervisors and administrators are most commonly the ones covering routes when drivers run short, per a Dayton Daily News survey of Ohio Association of Pupil Transportation members.
Fairborn officials have been clear that students shouldn't pay the price for the district's staffing troubles. The report quotes district leadership saying the kids will not be punished for missing school when a route is canceled, with an added commitment to make sure they're still receiving that instruction and support even when they can't physically get to the building.
A Statewide Problem With Deep Roots
Fairborn's struggle fits into a much larger statewide picture. Ohio public schools are experiencing a 15% day-to-day bus driver shortage, according to the National Association for Pupil Transportation, as cited by the Ohio Capital Journal. The outlet reported 17,008 active bus drivers statewide as of early September, according to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. That's a steep drop from the 25,706 active drivers Ohio employed before the pandemic, a decline The Statehouse News Bureau tracked to just 18,817 drivers by August 2025.
The causes are not mysterious. Bus drivers are paid less than the median American worker and often work part-time, unpredictable schedules, while the workforce itself is aging rapidly, Doug Palmer told the news bureau's reporting. Longer routes have compounded the strain too, since more than 66,500 nonpublic and charter school students were bused by public districts statewide during the 2022-23 school year alone. More than 90% of school districts nationwide were still reporting driver shortages as of that October 2025 report, underscoring that Fairborn's predicament is part of a problem that has outlasted its pandemic-era origins.
How Other Districts Are Coping
Other Ohio districts offer a sense of scale. Columbus City Schools, the state's largest district, runs 425 bus and van routes with 395 active drivers and 68 contract drivers to transport 32,450 students, and the district wants 500 drivers on staff, per the same Capital Journal report. Smaller districts face their own version of the squeeze: Patrick Henry Local Schools reported just 12 full-time drivers and four substitutes covering 12 district routes plus three non-public routes.
When routes can't be covered at all, some districts have turned to paying families directly. Cleveland Municipal School paid the families of more than 2,700 students to transport their own kids to school during the 2023-24 year, and Columbus City Schools did the same for more than 2,500 students, according to The Statehouse News Bureau. Pay incentives were the most common fix districts reported trying statewide, the Dayton Daily News survey found, though 35.5% of survey respondents also said the shortage had significantly increased administrators' own office hours just managing the fallout.
Outside Ohio, districts have taken more aggressive steps to stop the bleeding. Michigan's Waterford School District resorted to a staggered schedule of bus cancellations, scrapping three routes one Monday and four the next day, with plans to cancel four routes daily through the rest of that week, according to CBS Detroit. Waterford responded by raising hourly driver pay to between $21 and $24.75 depending on experience and covering full family health insurance premiums through the summer, an incentive package aimed squarely at recruiting and retention. For Fairborn families, the more immediate question is simply whether their kids' bus shows up — and whether the district's hiring pipeline can close that five-driver gap before the shortage gets worse.
