In a move to address significant shortages of bus drivers, the Cobb Board of Education on Thursday approved a request for pay raises by Superintendent Chris Ragsdale.
The unanimous 7-0 vote came Thursday night, after the district presented a recruiting video featuring interviews with current drivers.
All drivers will be getting raises of $5.25 an hour, Ragsdale said, boosting the current minimum hourly wage of $19.75 to $25 per hour, and topping out at $33.32 an hour, depending on salary steps.
The $7.6 million cost for the raises is coming from revenues generated from the rising Cobb property tax digest of 11.55 percent for the Cobb school district.
At a board work session Thursday afternoon, Ragsdale said the Cobb school district—which runs nearly 900 bus routes and transports more than 72,000 students—is short 200 drivers.
“We were not as competitive as we should be with our bus driver pay,” he said at the work session, calling the raises “a potential solution to a real problem. It’s a big problem. This is pretty much the last option.”
He said the raises will go into effect Aug. 25 and the salaries will be the highest for school bus drivers in metro Atlanta. The raises will be reflected in their Sept. 16 pay checks.
Tthe recruitment video featured mostly older individuals who talked about how driving a school bus “gets in your blood” and how they enjoy interacting with students.
Ragsdale said that retention has been difficult with some drivers running double routes and being exhausted as a result.
During public comment periods, some parents also urged the board to approve the raises, noting that the double routes often resulted in their children coming home later from school in the afternoons.
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