The American Way: Outsourcing Your Tax Dollars
The American Way: Outsourcing Your Tax Dollars
Decisions To Send Tax Dollars Out Of Communities Impact Families
Why are our school districts struggling to find bus drivers?
Every school district in Arkansas has battled finding qualified staff to keep buses moving. It’s a hard job with a split shift. Drivers get up and start their day before anyone else’s alarms go off.
You’d have to have a lot of nerve to drive around picking up children, our most precious commodity, and face down the daily struggle of dealing with busy roads with no shortage of idiot drivers. With a new generation of kids that avoided corporal punishment due to changes in social thinking, and the lack of real discipline inside schools, bus drivers take on a huge undertaking.
Kids these days are glued to a television that would no doubt make Andy Griffith and Aunt Bee go repent. Throw in violent video games and Tik Tok and you’ve created an almost unbearable situation for anyone tasked with the responsibility and authority to safely deliver 70+ kids per bus to and from school.
Last school year, the Sheridan School District was a hot topic on social media with parents complaints over late buses and sometimes no bus at all.
How did we get here?
There’s no doubt that the economy is taking a toll on middle America.
We live in a fast-paced service-driven environment. If you don’t produce you are looking for a job. It’s no different at a school district. Bus driver positions are promoted as a part-time position with less than adequate pay.
Last fall, the average daily bus route consisted of 3.5 hours equating to roughly $70 a day. This topic peaked my interest in the fall of 2021 when the school board issued the annual raise that gave the former superintendent a $3,000+ dollar increase in pay and the average annual pay increase for a bus driver was $200 if they were lucky.
After speaking to numerous drivers I quickly learned that something had changed drastically in the school district. Some of these drivers' duties were cut.
A New Way
The Sheridan School District board of directors approved a contract to outsource the custodial services March 9, 2020. On June 1, 2020, the school district entered into an annual contract with Southeast Service Corporation d/b/a SSC Service Solutions, a Tennessee corporation for general custodial positions and janitorial work.
The contract guarantees that SSC will clean the school buildings, and the school guarantees SSC will receive $1,129,556 for the service they provide in the initial contract signed in 2020.
Does Outsourcing Really Save Money?
Outsourcing jobs has become a common practice in America. Mom & Pop stores and restaurants are vanishing as fast as a politician can tell you a lie.
School districts are no different, often being the largest driver of the local economy fueled solely by your tax dollars. School districts can have a positive or negative impact on your bank account. It’s important to note that not every parent can miss work or be late without losing their job. When the bus doesn't run, it can send a shockwave through a household. Why would the school send Arkansas tax dollars to Tennessee? That seems counterproductive. Keeping our tax dollars at home helps build a stronger community.
Poor Decisions Lead to Problems
Sheridan bus drivers at the time had the option of driving a split shift morning route and evening for 180 days. With a starting pay of approximately $12,600 annually, to make more money, they now have to apply for a custodial job through SSC to fill their day. It’s a neat situation, if the drivers worked the 3.5 hour shift picking up kids and worked a 7-hour shift during the day directly for the school they’d get 50+ hours a week. Overtime! They’d be rolling in the cash.
It was worth taking the time to search out a current listing for an opening through SSC at the school. Take a look at this: SSC job opening.
SSC offers $12 per hour for janitorial workers. That's the same amount as for the 2023-24 school year.
It’s important to note that on page 12 of the contract between SSC and the Sheridan School District titled “Additional Service Rates” the school agrees to pay SSC $21 per hour plus materials for general custodial projects outside the scope of their contract.
For the $12-an-hour worker provided by SSC, the school pays $21 per hour. It states: “Material Costs and Third Party Vendor/Subcontracted Projects” will be subjected to “Invoice price plus 5% mark-up” so if SSC hires a subcontractor, the school pays the subcontractor invoice amount plus 5% to SSC for them to profit.
They didn't leave out “All hourly rates are subject to overtime at 1.5X standard hourly rates” either.
Gov. Sarah Sanders “LEARNS” Act failed to address the wage gap that exists in every Arkansas school district. With superintendents pulling in SIX figures and teachers now making a minimum of $50k a year, one could wonder: Will anyone ever try to help out the common everyday worker like bus drivers, lunch room workers and paraprofessionals?
According to the Sheridan School District's website “State Required Information”, Superintendent Dr. Karla Neathery earned a salary of $186,005.58 during the 2023-24 school year.
For the 2024-25 school year, Chad Pitts, the new superintendent, will earn $173,005.20. Like most other superintendents in Arkansas, Pitts gets a school vehicle for professional and personal use. Fuel, insurance and maintenance are included.
Dr. Neathery executed the SSC contract below on July 1, 2023.
At any rate maybe the state government is to blame for ignoring this issue during the education overhaul known as the Learns act. No matter who is at fault, the local school board is obligated to solve these issues. School boards waste no time hiring administrators and coaches at six figure salaries. Why are local level elected officials continuing to ignore classified staff pay? Many classified staff positions in Arkansas school districts earn a wage well below the poverty level.
Ask any parent how important a bus driver is to their daily lives. Members of the Sheridan school board have stated that providing buses are a privilege. Arkansas does not require a school district to transport students. Although, if your child misses too many days in a semester, you'll get to go see your local judge! But not if the bus is late or doesn’t run. The school will cover those days.
Even though the Sheridan School District receives an annual budget of $48.2 million, a year according to the CFO presentation Sept 11, 2023, classified staff pay still remains well below a livable wage.
There are many factors that have contributed to this bus driver crisis that parents and students have faced the last few years. But the leaders you elected to set the direction of the school district need to hear from every parent about this issue. If you wait for a politician to fix the problem you’re going to end up in the traffic line at the school.
[Editor's Note: A previous version of this article was published last fall. This new version has updated information.]
When did bussing kids become a thing? It's kind of a new technology, like maybe a hundred years. It's progressively getting worse not better. How about something new like mom or dad stays home, does a budget, smaller house, one car, read the Hobbit to your kid, work on maths at the grocery store, teach them how to love God, how to pray and say darn the rat race.
My experience watching the bussing dilemma in bryant is they shut down Paron schools claiming not enough money, so the facility that was there rots and the kids from that area are bussed almost an hour away to bryant. These kids are picked up at 6 am to get to school and probably get home around 5:30pm. They could've played in the woods for 4 hours and read a book under an apple tree. I just question the consensus that a school building and a schedule make it necessary to bus. Like leaders in education still sit around reconfiguring the same plan, maybe the classroom style system isn't a very good formula to make little brains capable of passing some standardized test. It seems to me this consensus works better for creating robots.