Saturday, April 20, 2024
"School Buses" by krispdk is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Granbury ISD is looking to hire eight bus drivers for the 2021-2022 academic year.
“This time of year, some of these guys (current bus drivers) just get to the point that they’re ready to move on to the next chapter in their life, so at this point, we’re looking at seven or eight replacements for the coming school year,” said Brian Caruthers, director of transportation for GISD.
The position pays $14 an hour, with new hires working five to six hours a day.
Applicants need to have a calm, cool disposition, possess good people skills with both students and adults and need a clean driving record.
“We train everybody to have a class B CDL, with a school bus, passenger and air brake endorsement,” Caruthers said. “We’ll help train them through the written test, driving test and help them get that license.”
Applicants will have to pay for a state background check, undergo fingerprinting and pay for other expenses, but they will get reimbursed for some of those fees 90 days after they receive their CDL license.
Caruthers said the district has several trainers to help with reading comprehension and alternative training strategies.
“If we train them during school, they actually get a little bit of a training paycheck if they are working and training, so that’s pretty neat,” he said.
Although the job is for the 2021-2022 academic year, Caruthers said the district has field trips coming up soon, so they need all the help they can get.
“We're pretty excited to meet the new folks and have many folks come into part of the family because that's really what this is here. We have a very close-knit group,” he said. “What they say in the business is, ‘School bus yellow gets in your blood, and once you've got it in there, you're in school transportation for the long haul.’ It's kind of like folks that are in the military, you know, you have somebody from the Air Force meet somebody from the Navy, and they talk about what they did there. It's very similar to what school bus driving is like and the camaraderie that you have with them.”
To apply for the position, call the GISD Transportation Department at 817-408-4150 and visit www.granbury.tedk12.com to fill out an application.
