Montgomery County Public Schools spends nearly $14,000 each year to transport a handful of bus drivers to homes far outside the school system.
Before dawn each weekday morning, two buses depart Hagerstown, Md., and Charles Town, W.Va., with about 25 drivers who trade the back seats for the driver’s seat upon reaching the county bus barns. The shuttle buses return again in the evening to be kept overnight in the towns, nearly 50 miles from Rockville.
School buses get about 7 miles per gallon, according to the American School Bus Council.
“The situation that many of our members find themselves in is that they can’t afford to live in the county,” said David Rodich, executive director of the county’s Service Employees International Union, representing non-teacher school staff.
Twenty-one percent of SEIU employees live outside the county.
“This makes it easier for bus operators to continue to work with the school system,” Rodich said.
Montgomery bus drivers make between $16 and $21 per hour, depending on their years behind the wheel.
The shuttle service — unique in the Washington region — also takes some of the pressure off Montgomery’s overcrowded bus depots. In Clarksburg, for example, more than 200 buses are serviced and maintained at a facility designed for only 100, according to a school board document. As a result, about 30 buses assigned to Clarksburg are kept “at employee homes and other locations.”
In Arlington and Alexandria, teachers and employees can receive a stipend of about $50 per month for carpooling or using alternative transportation, according to school officials. In Arlington, however, that incentive is on the list of probable budget cuts.
Pat O’Neill, president of the Montgomery school board, said none of her fellow board members winced at the cost — a small fraction of the system’s $2.2 billion budget request for fiscal 2011.
“This is to make sure we have well-qualified drivers,” O’Neill said. “I’m not sure that I’d want to be at the wheel with 50 lives in my hands and fighting Montgomery County traffic — it’s an awesome responsibility.”
