Buffalo schools need more than 100 bus aides. It found some of them Saturday

Of particular note: The district needs more than 100 bus aides, a crucial – and often thankless – position that involves keeping kids under control, so the driver can stay focused on the road without distractions, and helping children cross the street safely. 

"The goal is to eventually get an aide on every bus – that's the goal," said Audrienne Giles, the district's acting supervisor of bus aides. "Hopefully, we can get a good number to start with in September."

The district got rolling on those efforts Saturday, with a hiring event inside Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts on Masten Avenue. As of 11:30 a.m., Giles did not have a number on how many candidates had been hired Saturday but she said more than 100 people had attended that morning.

And there will be a couple of more hiring events to come over the summer. Giles, for one, hopes the district ends up hiring closer to 200 bus aides. 

A lack of bus aides – not to mention bus drivers – has been an ongoing issue for many districts across the country and a constant source of frustration for parents. For instance, during a public meeting with Buffalo Public Schools interim Superintendent Tonja Williams, school bus driver Rickey Carter said, in some instances, there are 60 students on a bus with no aide. At the meeting, Carter said drivers need "aides to watch our backs."

The district is looking for more bus aides like Margus Morrison, who was one of the 10 people killed in the May 14 mass shooting at the Tops on Jefferson Avenue. Morrison had worked since 2019 as an afternoon school bus aide for Buffalo Public School's Stanley M. Makowski Early Childhood Center No. 99. He was described by the district as a punctual and reliable bus aide. 

While recruiting bus aides is an issue, so is retaining them. In a 2016 Buffalo News story about bus aides, the district said at least 4 in 10 aides end up quitting before the end of each school year. The starting pay for a bus aide when that story published: $10.50 an hour, which has the same buying power as $12.89 does today.

Those hired Saturday will start at $15 an hour, and Giles said the starting rate goes to $15.75 in July. 

While wages have increased, the positions are part time and working the split shift can be difficult. Giles said, ideally, the district is looking for people who can work the morning and afternoon routes but will try to accommodate them if they can only do one or the other.

It works out well for Sandra Miller, a Buffalo resident who is retired from a career in clerical work and was hired Saturday as a bus aide. Miller said she was looking to reenter the workforce to make a few extra dollars. Plus, she loves kids.

And she understands the importance of bus aides. While her children are now grown, she remembers when her daughter would get dropped off on their busy city street and would have trouble crossing the road because there was no bus aide to help with traffic. Sometimes her daughter would get dropped off a couple of blocks away on a less busy street and would have to walk home from there.

With those memories in mind, she arrived early Saturday morning and left before noon with a job.

"It works out for me," Miller said. "It gives me something to do, getting up in the morning and to get out of the house, to assist kids because my children had to catch the buses, too."