Scottsdale Unified School District facing significant bus driver shortage for 2025-26

PHOENIX — With the 2025-26 school year just months away, the Scottsdale Unified School District is looking to fill 25-30 vacant bus driver positions.

David Jacobson, SUSD director of transportation, said other methods are being used to fill the gaps for now.

“We are covering all of our routes right now, but I have a lot of students that we are using vendor services for. I would love to bring that all back in house just for the accountability [and] the costs of contracting versus us driving them ourselves,” he said.

Jacobson said the vendor services are being used mainly for students who live farther off the typical bus route or for kids with special needs who go to specialized schools.

However, Jacobson is concerned the shortage may begin to affect major bus routes.

“My fear is if school districts don’t find drivers, you may have students that don’t make it to school because parents just don’t have a way to get them there,” he said. “And that’s my biggest fear, … that we are not educating kids and getting them into school.”

How is Scottsdale district recruiting school bus drivers?

SUSD held a recruitment event on Saturday, letting potential employees drive school buses around a closed course to get a feel for the vehicles. Jacobson said he hopes potential drivers will not look at the job as a part-time gig just because it is a split shift.

“People come in and get the kids to school,” he said. “They come and take them home, and so they have the middle of the day open. You get the holidays off with your kids if you have kids in school. It’s a unique job, but it fits the schedule for a lot of people.”

The job search is beginning now because Arizona school bus drivers are required to complete a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) test prior to being certified to transport schoolchildren. The training takes time to complete, so new drivers are given the summer to complete the licensing test.

CDL testing bill would help address nationwide shortage

The school bus driver shortage is a nationwide issue.

Earlier this month, U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona) cosponsored a bill that would permanently extend the exemption of the CDL test section where drivers have to lift the hood of a school bus and identify engine parts.

The Driving Forward Act would continue to allow potential school bus drivers to skip that specific portion of the test, which requires an extra three or four days of training. The section is still part the CDL test for long-haul truckers.

“This bipartisan bill cuts red tape to help more people become school bus drivers, directly addressing driver shortages and making the drive to school a better one,” Kelly said in a statement.

Test standards are important to SUSD director of transportation

Jacobson is not as confident in the legislation, voicing his concern for any requirements being removed from the CDL test.

“I’d be very cautious at lowering the standards for a bus driver as far as the CDL requirements, just because … it’s a check and balance to ensure that we are training them,” he said. “I mean, they have precious cargo. They’re hauling everyone’s children, and I think by lowering those standards … we’re going to maybe create some loopholes where we’re not ensuring that we’re putting out safe drivers that know what they’re doing.”

He added there are big and small school buses, and while he compared smaller buses to U-Hauls in the sense that anyone can drive them, Jacobson said the bigger buses have more specialized equipment that drivers should be required to know how to operate, such as air brakes.

With that level of equipment comes responsibility for training, according to Jacobson, who said in terms of incentives, his district is trying to recruit drivers through spreading the word and allowing interested candidates to try the buses out themselves.

Other districts, like the Chandler Unified School District, are implementing bus driver salary raises as an incentive, but Jacobson said SUSD will not be doing that.

“There hasn’t been real any real benefit to some of those incentives that are out there. They’re still looking for drivers. We’re looking at different things,” he said.

SUSD’s 2025-26 school starts on Aug. 4.

Funding for this journalism is made possible by the Arizona Local News Foundation.

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