A Franklin Special School District bus carrying 10 students crashed into a car on Hillsboro Road Monday morning just after 8 a.m. while heading to Johnson Elementary. No students were hurt in the collision, though the people riding in the car were taken to a hospital with minor injuries.
The crash was first reported by WKRN News 2, which noted the bus was en route to Johnson Elementary when it struck the car. Franklin Police confirmed that none of the 10 students aboard the bus were injured, while the occupants of the car were taken to the hospital with what police described as minor injuries, according to a separate report from wkrn.com.
Franklin Special School District said it moved quickly once word of the crash got out, alerting parents right away and getting the students back to Johnson Elementary just before 10 a.m. Monday. The district also told the station that the bus driver was pulled aside for driving tests following the crash, and has since cleared those tests and returned to the job.
A Statewide Shortage Looms Over the Incident
The crash has reignited talk of Tennessee's long-running bus-driver shortage, a concern that advocates say makes it harder for districts to keep routes fully staffed. Professional Educators of Tennessee CEO J.C. Bowman said the shortage is real and persistent, telling the outlet, “We have a shortage of bus drivers in Tennessee. So it's hard to find that position.”
That framing comes even as Middle Tennessee districts reported some improvement heading into the current school year. Per the same account, districts surveyed as the 2025 school year approached said their driver numbers were either the same as or better than the year before, even as hiring continued across the region.
Metro Nashville Public Schools pointed to higher pay, guaranteed 40-hour workweeks and added bonuses as reasons for its driver gains, the station reported. Clarksville-Montgomery County School System, meanwhile, said it had 280 drivers on staff but was still looking to fill 50 more positions, with starting pay listed at $21.92 an hour.
Not the First Bus Crash in Franklin
Monday's crash is not the only recent collision involving a Franklin Special Schools District bus. In March 2024, a bus crash in downtown Franklin near Fourth Avenue North and Bridge Street left three people aboard the bus uninjured, according to wkrn.com's earlier reporting. In that incident, the driver of the other vehicle was believed to have run a stop sign and was taken to a hospital with minor injuries.
That 2024 crash happened around 8:30 a.m., roughly two years before Monday's incident on Hillsboro Road, and involved a different location and circumstances. Franklin Special School District outlines its own safety procedures for handling concerns about its bus fleet, stating on its transportation page that its transportation supervisor is expected to begin investigating bus-safety complaints within 24 hours of receiving them.
