Fayette County is bumping up the hourly pay of school bus drivers and offering retention bonuses for workers who stick around for 90 days.
The district will pay bus drivers a starting rate of $19.26 an hour and will give those who are new to the profession $500 bonus if they stick with the job for 90 days. Current drivers also will get the $500 bonus around in the early weeks of the new school year, district leaders said a board meeting in July.
“We’ve seen the data that says if we can keep employees after 90 days, we got a good chance of retaining them,” Fayette Superintendent Jonathan Patterson said during a board of education meeting in mid-July.
The move comes as the south metro Atlanta district attempts to fill about 12 to 15 slots, the school system said in July. Like most metro area districts, Fayette is competing for drivers with other districts, MARTA and Amazon.
To attract more candidates, the school system raised the stipend it gives new drivers who undergo the mandatory commercial driver’s license training required to get the job. The county now pays $800 instead of the $200 it has traditionally offered.
“This will be paid after 20 days of employment,” Patterson said.
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