School bus salary los angeles driver#
His Rush-Henrietta Central School District is still struggling with driver shortages coming out of the pandemic, when many had to double up on routes. With 26 years’ experience as a bus driver, Carl Kirchgessner earns $20.35 an hour driving for a school system outside Rochester, N.Y. And it’s a fiction to suggest that people don’t need to live on the wages they earn.” “Schools can’t function without workers in these roles. “There’s a growing movement to fight for a living wage,” said Rebecca Kolins Givan, an associate professor at Rutgers University’s School of Management and Labor Relations. The union representing the 35 workers says the starting wage is less than $15 an hour in the suburban school district, which serves about 4,300 students. In one example, food service workers in Hastings, Minnesota, have been on strike for six weeks over higher wages and other issues. The fight for higher wages has been brewing in other school systems. “The idea of the teachers union and service personnel union saying we can do better if we stick together, could be a contagion in other communities looking and saying, ‘Hey, they did it in Los Angeles - maybe we can do it,’” said Lee Adler, a lecturer and expert on education union issues at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Leaders of United Teachers of Los Angeles, which represents 35,000 educators, counselors and other staff, have pledged solidarity with the strikers.Įxperts say it is unusual for different unions in the same school district to band together but the unified labor action in Los Angeles could mark an inflection point. Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has accused the union of refusing to negotiate and said that he was prepared to meet at any time.
The package would also include more full-time positions and an expansion of healthcare benefits.
The school district has offered a cumulative 23% raise, starting with 2% retroactive as of the 2020-21 school year and ending with 5% in 2024-25. Support staff, including many who work part-time, earn about $25,000 a year, according to the union, which is asking for a 30% raise. The union says many live in poverty because of low pay or limited work hours while struggling with inflation and the high cost of housing. Local 99 of the Service Employees International Union represents about 30,000 LAUSD teachers’ aides, special education assistants, bus drivers, custodians, cafeteria workers and other support staff. Asked about the biggest challenges, roughly four in 10 said candidates felt the salary and benefits weren’t good enough. More than half of the nation’s public schools started this school year feeling understaffed, with many struggling to fill key support staff jobs, especially in transportation and custodial work, according to an Education Department survey. In recent years, staff also have found themselves on the front lines of enforcing pandemic protocols or helping students struggling with their mental health or behavior.
School bus salary los angeles drivers#
They can also vary by metro area and even within school districts, depending on how long a person has been in a job.Īmid staff shortages exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, schools have struggled to hire during a strong labor market, adding to the burden on the staff that remain.Ī RAND survey of school leaders last year found that around three-fourths of school leaders say they are trying to hire more substitutes, 58% are trying to hire more bus drivers and 43% are trying to hire more tutors. Delaware had the highest salary for full-time K-12 support staff ($44,738), while Idaho had the lowest ($25,830), but salaries vary widely by state. The NEA, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, last year released data that showed full-time school support staff earned an average salary of $32,800.
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