When Muna Ali opened the doors of the big yellow bus on the morning of Dec. 5, her kids ran up the steps and gave her a big hug.
Originally from Somalia, Ali arrived in Winooski in 2013 and has four children in the school district. They aren’t the only ones happy to see her driving down the streets of Winooski.
The 1.5-square-mile city serves nearly 800 students but, until now, has never had a dedicated bus service for K-12 students, according to school Superintendent Sean McMannon.
Ali is one of many parents in Vermont’s most diverse school district who have long advocated for such a service.
After many starts and stops, they worked with district and state officials to finally arrive at a solution. Amid a nationwide bus driver shortage, parents and community members are stepping up to helm the buses — collectively navigating the onerous process of getting licensed to do so. The community-driven bus service started earlier this month, serving the students who live farthest away from school buildings.
On Dec. 5, the first two licensed drivers — Yussuf Abdullahi and Muna Ali, both of whom are parents of students in the district — began ferrying kids to and from school. On Dec. 16, two more drivers — Ali Sadik and Hussein Bundid — passed their final test and became fully licensed as well, school officials said.
“The challenge was getting here,” said Nicole Mace, the district’s director of finance and operations. “We were learning as we were going along mostly, and so I think we really broke ground for ourselves.”
Larkin Brown, English language learner intake and family engagement educator for the district, who coordinated several community meetings to discuss the busing issue, said the commitment and persistence of Winooski families was key to the new bus service’s success.
A long and bumpy road
Winooski families, concerned about their children’s safety walking to school — particularly during the winter and on streets lacking sidewalks — have long advocated for buses, with immigrant parents often taking the lead. The effort dates back 18 years, according to advocates.
In response to the push from families, the district put out a request for busing services in 2017 but didn’t get any bids, according to McMannon. It tried some stopgap measures, such as partnering with the public bus service and later with South Burlington for morning transportation during the winter months. Then the pandemic hit, and busing efforts ground to a halt.
During a series of community meetings last year, upset parents reiterated the need for buses.
“They were wanting answers, wanting to know what’s the plan because you have the funds in your budget and our kids aren’t getting to school on time,” recalled Mace, who attended one meeting last December.
The district does have a contract with Mountain Transit to transport pre-K students, and also students receiving special education services and those traveling to sports games. But the company told the district it didn’t have enough drivers to serve the entire student body.
“We have to say no, because we just do not have extra drivers at this point,” said Paul Clancy, terminal manager at Mountain Transit in Milton, which serves eight area school districts.
“Every district out there is looking for some drivers and I could use probably 20 or 25 more to serve everybody,” he said.
Bus driver shortages are a problem nationwide, but parents were undeterred. At the December meeting she attended, Mace recalled, “Several folks said, ‘I’ll drive the bus.’”
A community effort
The school district worked out a deal with Mountain Transit. The district would recruit drivers and help them get permits. After that, the company would train them and, once they received licenses, hire them to drive Winooski routes.
To become a school bus driver in Vermont, an applicant has to take five different written permit tests in English, which many fail; complete an all-day school bus clinic; log at least 50 hours of driving practice; and take the driving test.
Still, a handful of people — all of them members of Winooski’s immigrant community — stepped up. District officials brought in translators for those whose English was limited. They also arranged for tutoring and gave stipends to the drivers-in-training who were taking time off from work to prepare for the test.
Retired trucker David Lucey of Monkton heard about the project through Brown, who is his niece. He volunteered and tutored five of the potential drivers studying for the tests, with the help of interpreters.
“I admire their tenacity,” Lucey said, noting that the tests are very difficult and “some of those guys took that test five or six times.”
“I’ve been trucking for 45 years and I took the test again, just to see, and I barely passed,” Lucey added.
When transportation proved a barrier for some of the aspiring drivers, the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles sent a couple of staff members to Winooski, so people could take the permit tests without traveling to a DMV office.
At that time, the DMV’s bus driving clinics were being held in Lyndonville and Manchester, but the department worked with the district to host a clinic in Winooski.
“So that was amazing,” Mace said.
Once the service began, the district began a hot breakfast service for the students on bus routes that arrive at school early in the morning.
Low wages posed another barrier — many of the drivers-in-training were worried they would have to take a pay cut to work as bus drivers. So the district decided to pay them $25 per hour — the highest rate in the state, according to Mace.
The district signed a five-year contract with Mountain Transit in August, with the cost of the first three years locked in. For fiscal years 2022 and 2023, the district will pay $74,484, but the total cost will be lower this school year because service did not start until December. The total cost will depend on the number of routes the district operates, Mace said.
Abdullahi, 35, who’s originally from Somalia, was working full time, so driving his two children to school and back every day was not ideal. He already had a commercial driver’s license, so he decided last year to sign up to be a bus driver, he said.
Abdullahi, who arrived in Winooski in 2017, currently drives three routes. Speaking to a reporter on Dec. 14, he said he’d dropped off 15 kids at 7:20 a.m., a full bus of 77 at 7:35 a.m., and seven more at 7:55 a.m.
He had been working at Rhino Foods, but it was hard to balance that job with driving a bus six hours a day. When a night custodian job opened up at the Normand Street school building, he jumped on it.
Asked if he likes his new gigs, Abdullahi laughed and said he wishes he could move his family into a room there — that way they would never have to leave.
Winooski has 792 students pre-K-12. About 350 K-12 students who live 0.75 miles or more from their schools are eligible to ride the bus, according to Mace.
The district, which has two more drivers working on getting licenses, needs only four to meet its needs. However, officials said they anticipate the others will be snapped up by area school districts experiencing driver shortages — such as Burlington, South Burlington and Essex.
It’s a novel approach, one that other communities are trying, but none have been quite as successful as Winooski, according to Clancy.
“They did a heck of a good job. I take my hat off to them,” he said. “It’s a perfect model that everybody else is probably going to use. We’re hoping that they do.”
McMannon pointed to another benefit: “We have seen a significant decrease in absences and tardies since starting bus service,” he wrote in an email. “This is incredibly important in tandem with transporting students to school safely each day, especially during the winter months when walking can be treacherous.”
For Abdullahi, it’s all been worth the effort. As a school bus driver, he gets thanked by parents and students all the time, particularly one little boy.
“Every time when I open the door for him, he don’t go, he just stay and look at me and say, ‘Thank you for picking me up,’” he said.
