Staffing issues remain as CPS moves forward with a full return for students
COLUMBIA, MO (KMIZ)
Columbia Public Schools will welcome students back to classrooms full-time on April 5, but the district remains in need of bus drivers, nutrition service employees and substitute teachers.
The Columbia Board of Education decided Monday to move forward with all CPS students returning to in-seat classes five days a week.
As case rate numbers and hospitalizations continue to decline throughout Columbia, the board felt now was the time to allow students back into classrooms full-time.
Mary Earnhart, a CPS parent, said her second-grader was unable to ride the bus one morning after she received a phone call that the bus company didn't have a driver available for her particular route. Earnhart said she had to figure out another way to get her son to school.
"They had to call me the other day and tell me that they couldn't even take my son to school that day because they were short-handed so I had to figure that out," Earnhart said.
CPS spokeswoman Michelle Baumstark said the district continues to face challenges with staffing in multiple departments in response to the pandemic. Baumstark said the district is hiring.
Monday marks the day that all school staff members in the state will become eligible to receive a coronavirus vaccine as part of Phase 1B Tier 3 in the state's vaccine distribution plan.
CPS is hopeful that vaccine becoming available to school staff members will encourage more people to apply for positions within schools.
David Prince, the Vice President of Operations for Student Transportation of America, says about 10,000 students use the bus system within Columbia. The immediate shortage of drivers has been caused by drivers needing to quarantine after exposure to the virus. Prince says the pandemic has caused many challenges for the transportation industry nationally.
"This has really had sort of a negative effect on us because it's labor-intensive and a lot of industries can move to technology, but we can't move to technology in a sense that a bus cannot drive itself, so we have to have people sitting behind the wheel, responsible people,", said Prince.
Prince says many of his employees have decided not to return to transportation services until they are able to get vaccinated.
"We do have some employees who decided not to return again based on the exposure but they say once vaccination is out there and they're able to receive the vaccination they'll come back to work."
Prince says the department is working with the district on getting staff members vaccinated next week when eligibility is enacted. He hopes that with the vaccine becoming available more people will apply for positions and staff members will return to work.
"Based on the vaccination being out there now we hope that this drives us to get more employees back and also be able to attract the applicants who may have been sort of hesitant about coming into the industry knowing that they would be exposed to a number of students,", said Prince.
