Okaloosa schools outline bus-fleet gains, driver shortages and new routing tools

Mister Gore, a transportation staff member, told the Okaloosa County School Board workshop that the district has updated its fleet but is still short of drivers, a shortage that is creating longer routes and occasional “double runs.”

Gore said the district’s total fleet is 224 buses, with about 151 buses operating daily and roughly 73 held in reserve. “We still have 3 that are non air conditioned buses in the primary fleet,” he said, adding that the district has ordered more than 100 buses since February 2021.

Board members and staff focused on staffing gaps: Gore gave route-level numbers including Crestview with 57 drivers and seven unfilled routes, Niceville with 23 drivers and eight unfilled routes, and the south end with 34 drivers and seven unfilled routes. He described how the district uses non-transportation employees (coaches, teachers) to cover routes when needed and how an unexpected absence can create a domino effect for morning runs.

To reduce last-minute disruption, Gore described several operational changes: a parent-facing reservation form to collect next-year ridership so routes can be planned more precisely; adoption of Transfinder routing software to ingest reservation data and build routes; and moving the district notification system from Bus Bulletin to Thrillshare so the district can push alerts without requiring parents to opt in.

Gore described the reservation form as a one-time submission through parents’ FOCUS portal and said it asks for pickup and drop-off addresses and recurring exceptions (for example, weekly visits to a grandparent). He said the district intends to lock initial routes for the first two weeks of school to let ridership stabilize before making adjustments.

On compensation and recruitment, Gore said the current starting hourly rate for drivers is about $16.87 (noting benefits would add value) and that the district offers a sign-on bonus of $2,400 for candidates who already hold a CDL. He said the department uses hiring events, rebranded recruitment materials, job fairs, community visibility (parades, Touch-A-Truck) and bonuses to attract and retain drivers.

Board members pressed on safety and student behavior. Gore said the district uses cameras on buses, deploys rotating monitors for routes with known behavior issues, and works with school administrators and the ESE (exceptional student education) department to get support for drivers. “If you have a student or two that’s disrupting the entire bus, I would rather fight that battle with those two students than have an accident and 50 students are in a bad spot,” he said.

Gore summarized the department’s near-term priorities as hiring drivers to restore routes, finishing the Transfinder rollout after the current vendor contract ends, integrating the FOCUS reservation data, and expanding parent notification features over time (including an app and later “student-checked-in” functionality).