A teacher waves to her students as they get off the bus at Carter Traditional Elementary School in Louisville on Jan. 24, 2022, in this file photo. (Photo by Jon Cherry/Getty Images)

FRANKFORT —?Republican-backed bills aimed at relieving issues around transporting Kentucky kids to schools were heard in legislative committees Tuesday.?

Rep. Emily Callaway, R-Louisville, presented House Bill 447 to the House Education Committee Tuesday morning. If passed, her bill would allow school districts to use passenger vehicles, such as vans, to transport kids to and from school as well as other approved school activities. The vehicles could be owned by the district, leased or contracted.?

The vans would not require drivers to have a commercial driver’s license, which is needed to drive large school buses. Without that requirement, more job applicants would be eligible to transport students, Callaway said in a statement.?

Hours later, Rep. David Hale, R-Wellington, presented House Bill 461 in the House Transportation Committee. The bill would allow civil penalties to be levied for violations caught on cameras that record school bus surroundings, including traffic, while buses stop for students to get on or off a bus.?

Schools across the country are facing bus driver shortages. A fall report from the Economic Policy Institute found that about 192,400 bus drivers were working in K–12 schools in September 2023, down 15.1% from five years before.?

Kentucky is no stranger to these problems. In November, Jefferson County school bus drivers called in sick to protest a lack of support from their school district and long bus routes. Before that, Jefferson County Public Schools were forced to cancel classes after changes in bus routes triggered chaos. Students did not get home until hours after school ended. Officials said a shortage of drivers necessitated the disastrous changes in bus routes and schedules.

Other districts have experienced similar issues. Daviess County Public Schools said a software issue forced a delay in the first day of school in 2022 as a new transportation routing system was implemented.?

Kentucky’s worsening teacher shortage requires an ‘across the pipeline’ approach, officials say

A report to the legislature late last year said Kentucky’s public schools are suffering an “acute” shortage of staff, including bus drivers, custodians, cafeteria workers and substitute teachers. Although local school boards have increased pay by up to 19 percent over the last five years, staff leaving school jobs “appear to be making a lot more in the private sector, as much as 115 percent,“ said the report by the Office of Education Accountability.

Callaway said her bill would reduce long bus rides for both drivers and students across Kentucky and would lower the number of large buses driving on narrow rural roads.

“These vans will be clearly marked. They will have safety inspections every 30 days,” the representative said.?

The House Education Committee forwarded Callaway’s bill in a vote of 18-0 and adopted a committee substitute version. So far, the bill has both Republican and Democratic co-sponsors. Another Louisville lawmaker, Senate Democratic Whip David Yates, introduced a similar piece of legislation, Senate Bill 92, in the Senate earlier this session. It was assigned to the Senate Transportation Committee, but so far has not had a hearing.?

Callaway is also the primary sponsor of another school transportation bill, House Bill 446. It would require local boards of education to adopt a transportation services policy that would allow districts to refuse transporting a student if they had a risk of harming others or if their parent or guardian had acted in “a threatening or aggressive manner” toward school employees, such as a bus driver. That bill was approved by the House Education Committee last week.?

Hale’s bill would allow school districts to install cameras on the stop arms of school buses to monitor surroundings while the bus is stopped. The representative said the cameras would record only while the stop arm is activated and not while the bus is moving. He’s sponsored similar legislation before.?

In Kentucky, it is illegal for traffic following a school bus to pass the bus as it stops and children are aboard.?

Hale said some districts in the state have purchased such cameras and are using them already. He said the estimated cost of installing cameras on one bus in his House District was $1,900.??

The transportation committee forwarded the bill in a vote of 23-1 with a committee substitute version.?

“This has certainly struck a chord with a lot of school superintendents around the state,” Hale told the committee, adding he heard they viewed it as a safety measure for students entering and exiting a bus.?